


Touch Me

by GR-Wickstaff (Weirdness_Unlimited)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adult Content, Consent, Cuddling, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cunnalingus, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, Erotica, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Failed Suicide Attempt, Falling In Love, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Monster Boyfriend, Muteness, Necromancy, Oral Sex, Orc Culture, Orcs, PTSD symptoms, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Sex, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Smut, Suicide Attempt, Teratophilia, Touch Telepathy, Touch-Starved, Touchy-Feely, Trauma, Trust, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Violence, Vulgar Language, angry brute to big gentle lug, cuddling for body heat, emotionally charged, orc boyfriend, orc romance, orc smut, sexually explicit, snuggles, telepathy but not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:28:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26805115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weirdness_Unlimited/pseuds/GR-Wickstaff
Summary: Forced to fight in a centuries long war his people cannot win, an orc warrior called Vulmon goes on a suicide mission to destroy the devastating weapon turned against his battalion; only to find a disheveled young woman trapped inside it. Assuming that her role within the abominable machine is to serve as a power source, Vulmon is forced to flee with the strange woman to Ruxheim where they might find safe harbor with his mother clan, but the Dominion will not let the girl go without a struggle to the bitter end.
Relationships: Female Human/Male Orc, Human/Orc, Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 85
Kudos: 134





	1. Adder Bite

-Vulmon-

The stench of burnt hair clung to Vulmon as he waited. The smell was sickening, but not as nauseating as the rocking of the barge. Once it left the canals headed into the stormy harbors of the west it would become unbearable. He didn't plan on hiding as a stowaway long enough to grow accustomed to the taste of his own bile, however. 

Vulmon had listened for four days and four nights at the shadowed entryway into the dregs of the lower storage deck. He'd learned when the patrol detail onboard changed shifts within the first day, every twelve hours, and he knew when he had opportunities to explore between the decks without being detected. Vulmon had collected oil from lamps wherever they were left unattended each time the men on the lower deck left their cramped barracks to relieve other officers.

His plan was simple. Sink the ship. The first step was to dump the oil there where he hid with the supplies and food stores then set fire to the place as the shift change occurred. Those moving toward their bunks after being relieved would find the blaze and alert the others. That's when he'd have his chance to make certain there was nothing left at the murky floor of the canal to reclaim. 

His goal was to break into the fiercely guarded holdings for the abomination turned against his people. The elves would be too busy trying to save themselves from annihilation to stop him on his path. During the chaos and frantic effort to put out the flames, Vulmon would have his chance to destroy the weapon beyond any hope of repair. Elven mechanical works are notoriously fiddly and delicate but this probably wouldn't be as easy as smashing their dainty furniture or decorative metallurgy.

Vulmon did not plan to survive his mission, doubting that he'd have enough time to do sufficient damage _and_ escape before the barge became a raging inferno sinking into roiling black waters.

It was alright if he didn't survive, he'd done well to convince himself of that. So many had died in the battle a week ago. An entire army perished knowing they were impotent against the horror the Dominion had created. He couldn't allow so many brothers, sisters, and a father to die a pointless death in vain. 

Vulmon's greatest weapon was anger. What drove him on was imagining the rage of five thousand brethren and kin, some he'd known as all of his twenty-eight years, flowing through him from beyond the thinning membrane between life and death. He'd tear a hole through that sheer veil and join them soon enough but not before making absolutely certain the elves could never levy such a destructive power against the southern strongholds of Hecstein again. Then, he and his kin could rest easy. His only regret was that his bones would be sunken in the silt and his flesh turned to fish shit instead of left on the battleground among the ashes of his comrades.

The fresh memory of watching them fall to pieces, burned to dust by a blinding light in a matter of mere heartbeats, was all Vulmon needed to solidify his resolve. It felt casual to ensure his own demise with a few sparks from his flint and fire striker to sire flames into the oil-soaked boards before him. He felt a grim giddiness as he simply climbed the ladder out of the room and walked around the next corner while the fire grew and grew behind him.

Now, he didn't so much care if he was seen. The elf soldiers couldn't swarm him if most of them were occupied with the catastrophe he'd created. Vulmon was sure that with the war hammer in his hands, skulls would shatter and anyone there to witness his wrath would flee in terror. This weapon had been his father’s favorite hammerhead and it would be his last laugh too.

His first adversary came running around a corner ahead and at first, appeared not to believe what he saw before him. The elf soldier was seemingly flummoxed at the sight of a battle-ready orc onboard a Dominion ship, he made the mistake of hesitating before drawing his short sword. Too late. Vulmon had swung the war hammer, shattering an elbow and neutralizing the enemy before he could strike. The next to come dashing around the bend in the corridor was not so shocked. Vulmon had no choice but to throw out his left arm to prevent the blade from gliding across his throat. He could not bring the weight of the hammer back around fast enough to parry with the haft. Better a ruined gauntlet and the bite of steel tasting the meat of his forearm rather than a gushing neck. He dropped the hammer haft while the rest of him moved toward his opponent to push the blade-wielding arm of the Hy-ur soldier aside, driving his right fist upward into the elf’s fragile jaw to knock him onto his armored back. Their plate armor makes them like tortoises. The soldier would not recover in time to avoid the reclaimed hammer coming down upon him.

 _Run to your slaughter_ , Vulmon thought scornfully as another small wave of men flowed around him toward the growing glow of the fire behind him. A hapless few stopped to battle him in the narrow passage. Their blades could not do enough harm to stop Vulmon in his tracks. He didn't plan on seeing another rising sun, so what did it matter if he bled a trail indicating his path to the ultimate and final destination? The sight and smell of his own blood made his heart pound like a war drum. This only fueled his rage much to the detriment of anyone in his way. Fragile elf necks were a simple matter in his hands and their thin bones mere twigs under the might of his father’s hammer. 

He reached the place he was looking for without difficulty. They made it too obvious, stationing specially adorned guards sworn not to move from their positions at either side of enormous double doors no matter the reason, even if the damn ship was on fire.

It was too easy, those dedicated to protecting their precious death machine offered no more resistance than butter against a hot spoon. They fell lifeless at his boots within a paltry few seconds of combat. One had a crushed helmet full of crimson, the other lied broken a short distance from the door where Vulmon left him. It wasn't a fight worth remembering.

Vulmon didn't trust the success he'd found. Destiny is funny that way. You should never too eagerly accept something that offers you no challenge. To Vulmon, ease to accomplish what you are doing only meant that something was going wrong further down your chosen path. _Something_ was waiting on the other side of the door to vex him, he was sure of it.

During the battle a week ago, Vulmon hadn't seen the weapon itself. He'd seen one siege tower standing tall and alone in an open landscape of grassy hills. A moment later, those same hills were lit so brightly that the dewy green of the land looked snow-white as a hellish column of light erupted from the top. He remembered what he thought of the tower when he first saw it; before the slaughter began. _It's just for show, that doesn't belong here where there are no walls to scale._ The ire of his mistaken first impression made it even easier to put his foot through the double door separating him from the cursed thing. 

He tore what splintered panels of wood hung in his way by a surviving hinge and tossed them aside. He expected to see the siege tower dismantled inside around the disassembled mechanical crap which it must have housed, and he did, but he also saw an overturned bucket and some bread on a low table next to... It looked like a great gilded gold pipe encrusted in mage sigils. It was framed in by Its wheels, about as long as he was tall, and tethered down so it wouldn't roll through the wall into the next room the moment the boat hit turbulent waters. Great as it was, It wasn't as impressive as he'd expected it to be. He'd seen dwarven mechanic work and their steam-powered cities under the mountains; what hulking behemoth machinery the dwarves made. It figures that elves would have the hubris to model their weapon of destruction after themselves. This evil was sleek, petite, and hideously ornate. Hell, the end which Vulmon assumed the terrible death-light erupted from was modeled after the face of their emperor. A silver wand ringed in yet more glittering gold stuck out from the gaping mouth of the sculpted likeness like a tongue. 

Fury ignited once more, Vulmon roared what he was sure would be his final war cry. He gripped the haft of his father's war hammer and hefted the heavy head of the heirloom high with every intention of knocking the emperor's smarmy face clean away from this monstrosity.

The impact sent painful jolts up his arms to rattle the sockets of his shoulders. The weapon rang like an enormous bell when struck, deep and resonate. The echoing ring made his head ache as he fell into a wide stance to pummel it again.

Screams. He heard muffled shrieks. _The hell?_

His second swing missed and the hammerhead struck the floor by the outer wheel, crashing through the wooden planks as the cries startled him. Was the weapon crying? No, a _woman_ was crying somewhere in the room.

There was no time for mercy. Whoever she was, she was doomed too, so Vulmon freed the hammerhead from the floorboards and hefted it high once more. The emperor's visage deserved more than a mere dent caving in his forehead. 

This time, there was no clear ring like a great bell. A boom of thunder roared as steel struck plated lead, the same ruthless light that had annihilated all but one blinded Vulmon, and finally, there was only the sound of gushing dark waters. The orc warrior had been blown clear of the weapon, thrown backward by the force of the blast, and left sprawled over the once carefully ordered wooden support struts for the siege tower.

Everything now lay in disarray. Where the elves' weapon had been was now merely holes torn out of the wall where the brackets holding its straps had been. Across the room, the weapon itself had crimped shorter and bowed outward on all sides as it sat halfway through the opposite wall.

Invading moonlight danced over Vulmon's prone body as he lay dazed. Water lapped inside from the hole blown through the upper hull every time the boat listed this way and that. The cool caress of the waters climbing up his leg and the sting of hot embers blowing in through the doorway against his right arm began to rouse him back to his senses. 

His ears rang. He could hear very little and despite the knowledge that he was going to drown, the terror of such a death was distant. Vulmon had accepted his fate, but he could not yet submit to his oblivion. He had to be sure that the thing was destroyed.

The water was ankle-deep, pulling out and rushing back in with the rocking of the ship as he stood. Vulmon had to lean into the wall to steady himself against the waning motions of the boat. 

He saw the condition of the weapon, how a seam had blown out on one side and the sculpted face was nowhere to be found or perhaps no longer existent. _So the deed is done_ , he thought but his hearing was returning and he still detected the sound of screams.

Orcs are durable. He'd survived the explosion of the weapon misfiring and there was no surprise in that, but an elf woman who happened to be within the room too? It didn't seem likely that something so fragile could endure that, unless...

It no longer mattered how this creation worked or what evil workings could be found inside, but morbid curiosity is powerful and the warrior had nothing else to lose by indulging it. He slid his fingers between the opened seam and lifted the bowed access hatch.The encroaching fires offered enough light to see what was hidden within.

He peered in, and the inside of the weapon peered back with bulging wet eyes ringed in red. Rounded ears? A human girl? He couldn't tell how old she was. The woman was strapped inside by leather belts and dressed in nothing but a filth encrusted length of cloth with a slit cut in it to put her head through. The bread on the table and the bucket that had been on the floor now made better sense, though little else did. She was being cleaned and fed but kept inside this thing while on route to the front line. Why? Why would there be a human inside of this abomination? 

Confused, he reached in to touch what he saw and confirm it was what he thought it was, not a hallucination as a result of a head injury. The minuscule creature gnashed her blunt teeth into the gag tied around her mouth and shrieked some more, but choked herself to silence the moment Vulmon's fingers wrapped around her bicep. Then, it was his own screams which echoed into the night. 

He could feel it, _her,_ as if it were his own aching body lying inside this coffin sized prison suffocating in fear and filth.

Had Vulmon not been having the most intensely unpleasant experience of his life, an old orcish proverb may have come to his mind. _If it looks like an innocent stick in an unusual place, then it's probably an adder._


	2. Miscommunication

-Vulmon-

Having someone else inside his head had shaken Vulmon to his deepest core. The how of it hadn't mattered at the time, and that was what scared him. The moment he'd touched her, there had been no space left in his head to ask questions. There was only _panic_ and _run away._

She'd used him, his strong hands to tear asunder the belts holding her inside the weapon, his strong body to lift a load-bearing support strut from the disassembled siege tower and throw it out the gaping hole in the ship so they had an impromptu life raft, and he had no choice in the matter. Neither of them could swim, but how could he know that? Neither of them had exchanged a single word, Vulmon shouldn't know that she couldn't swim, but he did.

All he could do was watch from the bank of the canal as the flaming barge sank and the warships ahead of it made an about-face to turn back for survivors and, presumably, the woman. She merely sat in the mud retching on swallowed water and holding herself as she shivered. 

It wasn't _supposed_ to be this way. Vulmon wasn't supposed to watch another dawn brighten the spring skies.

Her inability to swim wasn't the only thing he knew. He also knew what she was inside that thing for, but not because she had known. She didn't. There were other indicators on her barely clothed body giving rise to assumptions. Shackles about her wrists, ankles, and neck that were so glittering and thin that they were useless for physical restraints, they were to restrain something else, some damnable form of magic, he guessed. Whatever magic those bonds kept locked away within her, it was surely what had powered the weapon.

They couldn't stay there long enough for him to collect his thoughts and investigate her to confirm his suspicions. This place would be crawling with Dominion soldiers in rescue and reclamation efforts before long. Vulmon knew he was in no condition to fight again; being found now would be a death sentence.

"It's time to leave," he announced, but she didn't respond, she just sat there wet and shivering.

"Get up, we need to move now," he tried again and this time she turned her head, but only stared blankly at him, dry lips slightly agape.

The sight of her sent chills up his spine. Large owlish eyes, matted hair hanging in soaked chunks from her head, and an absent look about her face.

Vulmon had battled packs of mountain trolls in his youth for fun, became a veteran of war before his twentieth summer, but the sight of this ghostly ragamuffin made him squirm. It was because she looked like she had no damn clue what was going on. 

_But maybe she truly doesn't know what's going on_ , he considered. He ground his molars in frustration before saying another word.

"You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?" Vulmon hissed. 

He was speaking the common tongue, not orcish. Even bumpkins raised hermited in the woods spoke common.

Her eyebrows pulled together. At least now she looked confused which was, thankfully, less eerie than the empty doll-eyed pathos she seemed to have a habit of projecting. She looked back to the canal, at the sinking barge, to Vulmon who scowled sourly down at her, then to the woodland behind him.

Vulmon thought she was coming around, maybe realizing the danger of their position, but instead of saying anything she lifted both hands and reached for his left. 

"No, no, _no_ ," he took a long step backward to keep out of her reach, "you can _not_ touch me again, hell no."

Her tiny hands curled to fists as she dropped them into her lap and wore a pout at his rejection. Vulmon meanwhile shuddered as he recalled her cold little mitts pressing at any exposed skin as she pushed all of her desire to escape into him.

Maybe she wasn't human. Maybe she was something else. Maybe this was some demonic entity tethered down to a simple mortal form with magic. Maybe she couldn't speak at all, because whatever she did to him on the barge was how her kind communicate. He was making himself paranoid. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

All he knew at that moment was that he couldn't leave her here. She was far too valuable. Assuming she was a required component to the weapon, making sure she didn't fall back into Dominion hands was vital. Murder was the simplest solution to that problem, he could very easily kill her without touching her directly, a rock to the head will do. Although, killing her would go against a dozen laws of Vulkrid. She was unarmed, non-hostile, and in all honesty, fairly pathetic but not pathetic enough for a mercy killing. Alright, he had to take her home to his mother-clan, then. Vulmon was certain his uncle would know what to do with her.

She'd resumed hugging herself around her bare knees and watched the final flames glittering on the rippling water. Vulmon had to get her attention again and try to get it across that he wanted them both to go, now. The orc figured it didn't matter what he said. A curt grunt was enough to command her attention. He took another step back and waved a hand to follow. Finally, she seemed to understand, standing and watching him for the span of two breaths before following on her shaky legs.

Vulmon had little reason to worry that the woman might run, and if she did, she probably wouldn't make it far. She smelled like death and noisily fought with the underbrush as they moved up the bank into the woodland. It was easier for her once they found a game trail to follow, but she was still slower than hell.

Vulmon frequently had to stop and wait while she stumbled along. It got old fast, watching her struggle to keep up and tremble like a leaf in the wind wherever she stopped. He was cold too, soaked to the bone, and bleeding, but Vulmon had a destination in mind and they had to move if they wanted to get there in any reasonable amount of time.

He had no equipment, no canvas for a tent, no bedroll, no food, and nothing to treat the wounds slashed into his flesh by the thin razors of elven weapons. He didn't even have a spare pair of braies. Everything was destroyed, including the battalion camps which were razed down to smoldering embers, so going back to scavenge supplies was no option either. 

He needed to get to the city of the bay, Coreltia, and pray that a friend who made his living there wasn't at sea. Korg Dirnis, he could help him find supplies for a low cost so that they could move North, toward home.

_The woman will have to be carried_ , he decided as he stopped and turned to watch her wobble along behind him a final time. But how to do it without touching her? He wasn't sure there was a way. He grit his teeth and scowled around his tusks as they observed one another. There was no one but the two of them on the game trail, but that wouldn't last long. He had to make a decision quickly. 

Vulmon growled tersely and took a step back when she reached toward him, just like last time. 

He glared up and down the scarred up thing in the strengthening morning light. She was covered in patterns of uniformly thick ridges of scar tissue. They somewhat resembled the whorls of fingerprints and their raised shapes trapped dirt in their creases. _Disturbing_.

Her tangled up mop was a dark brown, had twigs and burrs stuck in it from the walk, and the bottom of the oversized dish rag she wore was stained in- _Well_ , he wasn't sure he wanted to think too much about what those dark blotches were. There was no way around how filthy she was, so there was another reason to balk at the idea of touching her.

Vulmon had an option, shuck off his cuirass and protective leather sleeves to wrap the dirty little creature in the gambeson he'd been wearing to keep warm. It was useless, wet, and heavy now, anyway.

He just needed to get far enough from the scene of his crimes to build a fire without being detected. She'd need to be hauled around which wasn't ideal, given her abilities. He wanted several miles between himself and the canal before risking a thick column of smoke from damp wood.

Off came his leathers, his unstrung bow and quiver, his belts and hatchet, and finally the wool-lined gambeson. All he had left was a thin wet tunic and his slacks to keep him warm under the equipment he threw back on, but the sun was rising and he'd be moving. He felt that he could suffer a few hours for a reasonable pace and a hot fire at the end of his march. 

Vulmon turned the gambeson inside out to avoid her grime rubbing off inside, then held it out. All she did was worm her hand around the garment and reach for his face. This time he didn't move quickly enough to completely avoid her. Her middle finger brushed over his lower lip and he received a shock of what she was thinking and feeling. The chill in the air seemed to double for a split second as he stumbled backward, she was almost completely numb in the hands and feet when she touched him and he felt that fact in his own extremities. The rest of that, whatever it was, reminded him of being lost and calling for help at the top of his lungs. She wanted to communicate, to _connect_.

It was too chaotic and the sensation of it made Vulmon feel like his brain was being squeezed out through his ears. _No_. Once he recovered from his stagger, he lunged forward out of frustration and snatched her wrist in his fist.

"STOP DOING THAT!" Vulmon roared down as her face twisted with the fear now racing up his arm and into his skull.

The girl and the orc broke apart, sharing in her terror and falling flat on their rear ends, both trembling and scrambling away from one another. Vulmon recovered, quickly realizing that the fear wasn't his own. Now he knew how it felt to those he'd intimidated in the past with his size and how loudly he could bark threats. 

The orc stood, cursing at the mud sticking to his backside, and picked up the gambeson once more. Rather than chase her with it, Vulmon simply tossed the wet garment over the cowering woman and scooped her into it like you would a spooked cat into a towel.

The woman wasn't heavy enough to elicit even a grumble of effort. Vulmon noted her lightness and the weakness of her squirms as he adjusted her meager weight. She should probably be heavier and stronger even as short as she was. Who knows how long she'd been strapped down and unable to move, wasting away.

Vulmon tried to remind himself internally that this was not the time for sympathy. This woman apparently existed to aid in dominion cruelty. That didn't mean he needed to be cruel himself, but it also didn't mean he needed to slow down or allow her to reach into his mind again. He was not in the mood to be distracted long enough for the Hy-ur Dominion rangers to track him. He didn't doubt their ability, they'd likely already found the tracks on the bank. There was no time for sensitivity. 

Vulmon's only prayer was that the earth of the game trail he was on was compressed enough by wildlife traffic that he wasn't leaving tracks discernable to keen elf eyes. Acid eroded his guts at the thought.

The woman was starting to sniffle and jerk in his arms with soft little sobs. Vulmon couldn't hide his cringe. Her whimpering was understandable, and in all honesty, he felt no better than she did. The orc was reminded that when or _if_ he arrived home to the clan, this was the sound that would greet him twenty fold. Wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, and children mourning the losses.


	3. Bleeding Behemoth

-Dew-On-Heels-

She watched him, the orc, as he piled leaf litter onto the shallow pit he'd created and threw sparks over the makeshift tinder with his flint and fire striker. The fire was fed with whatever was picked up to clear the space, and for the first time in many long hours, Dew-On-Heels could warm blood flow back into her hands and feet. The very bones of her fingers and toes ached at the sudden change of temperature, but the warmth of the flames was irresistible.

The orc, an unwitting savior and kidnapper, was a formidable crank full of fury. She'd tasted of his mind and found a deep hatred for the tall eared elves, one she could match him for and it rankled like a rotting body. Past that, there was a rage burning hotter than any hatred and joined by flickering images of bones, charred black, death all around him. This was a fresh wound in his mind, new and raw as the still oozing breaks in his tough hide.

Truth be told, he frightened her terribly as something she could only observe visually, an enormous being who could crush her skull between his huge palms, then gouge out her eyes with the tusks rising past his lower lip which was pushed forward by the girth of such gratuitous teeth. He looked like a boar about to charge and gore you to death and was just as concerned with his personal space as the reclusive animal he resembled.

He was terrifying to witness, but she'd felt him, the sadness, how lost he was, and that he didn't know what to do with her at all. Dew-On-Heels knew she wasn't wanted -he made that abundantly clear when last they spoke- but she also knew he wouldn't do her harm. Probably. 

She never quite imagined this would be her life. She thought she'd herd goats and weave most of her living days like her mother or, perhaps, trade goods like her father. She never thought she'd be orphaned and then thrust into a world of utter isolation.

Leather gloves were all she'd known for months. For those who speak the way most folk do, it was like being rendered unable to hear or make a sound. As chaotic as the Orc's mind and heart were, she craved to speak to him again. He was the first person to touch her with their bare hands in so long. 

It was frustrating that the only way she could have a conversation was through the touch of skin-to-skin and that it was so deeply abhorrent to anyone who was not one of her own people. Everyone she'd known all her life with the exception of only a few of her father's trading contacts spoke the way she did. Her people were isolated, shy, still healing from exploitation at the hands of a few terrible but powerful men and therefore vulnerable, so they hid deep in unclaimed lands and avoided contact. Dew-On-Heels still wasn't certain how she came to be where she was and did not know the way home. All she knew was that no one wanted to speak with her and that maybe it frightened them to do so. Still, she was desperate to not be alone, even for a moment. It felt lonely that there was no way to give her name to this person who was only ten feet away without upsetting him. She'd tried to when he chose this place to build a fire and he was angry with her over it, so she did not try again.

She was broken from her private thoughts next to the fire by the sound of rustling cloth and groaning. When she glanced upward at the orc who was now standing, she found him stripping himself down to his braies. 

She tried not to look. The thin, lightly dyed, and damp linen left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Dew-on-heels was not prepared for orc cock and the dark halo of body hair pressed to the wet cloth which barely provided him any decency, and this was _positively_ indecent of him. Granted, she'd been more or less naked before he wrapped her in his gambeson, probably to avoid speaking to her when he decided to pick her up and jog. What point was there in modesty now? He'd already seen her pale ass and skinny legs every time the wind blew around the shit-stained scraps she'd been forced to wear in that cramped dark hell.

Alas, he was impossible not to look at while he hung his leather armor and clothing around on the nearby branches of young trees. She'd never seen anyone with a body built like his, or so heavily scarred. The sheer mass of him astounded and captivated her. There was no part of him that did not reflect the demands of life as a warrior. You could easily glean an idea of how strong he was just by the gentle movement of shoulder and back muscle bunching or relaxing accordingly as he shook out his tunic and hung it. He was a mountainous man. 

His back wore no scars, not a one. Only his front half showed that his will to live was strong and only spite had held him together. Something with claws had tried to rend him in half with a single swipe, maybe a bear. Five lines puckered in indentation or swollen in keloids raked diagonally from his right pectoral down to the bottom of his left ribs. His right nipple was split by one of those ragged lines. How that must have bled horrifically when it was new. He'd been stabbed at least once in his life, the scar was deep and grisled against his lower belly. His knees had been scraped raw many times, and the scars were pale against the pigment of his skin. His shins, these too had suffered, some blotches of discolored flesh refused to grow hair anymore. 

Other scars were thinner, from blades across his arms and many of these were very new. His injuries left crusted red and brown stains on him. The deepest of his new wounds was still slowly bleeding, the thin clotting broken open by the friction of undressing. 

He was coming her way after he finished hanging everything he owned to dry, save for what he left her sitting there swaddled in with only her hands and feet sticking out to soak in the warmth of the fire. She got a close look at the thick hair of his chest as he leaned down. She tried to shrink into the gambeson, for she didn't want to give it up. _Must be nice having a little something growing on you to keep a bit warm,_ she thought bitterly. All he had to do to get back what belonged to him was grasp the collar of the garment and lift it until she fell out of it. This he held close to the fire as he stood, turning it this way and that to dry it faster as she shivered on the cold ground.

This wasn't a camp, and they weren't staying here any longer than it took to dry out, this was clear to Dew-On-Heels now as she watched him. He wanted to leave as quickly as he could, as evidenced by how frustrated he became as things took their due time to dry, especially the thick piece in his hands.

The warrior was swaying a bit as he worked to wring out and dry his clothes. He _was_ hurt, and _had_ bled, but how much Dew-On-Heels could only wager a guess at. The stains in his hung tunic were great blooms of red. If she knew no better and the torn sleeves of the comfortable linens hadn't shown where steel had slashed clean through his protective outer layers, she might think the arms of the garment had been dyed red as a fashion statement.

He was far bigger than any human she'd ever met, so he probably had more blood to lose. It was hard to tell if he'd gone pale from blood loss. Dew-On-Heels had never seen skin like his in person. She'd heard that orcs had dark grey or slightly mossy skin, and he did, but she didn't know how that would translate into a loss of color from not having enough life in his veins.

His eyes, they were grey like stone, were beginning to look glazed. He shivered and seemed to try shifting his weight but lost balance and stumbled sideways with the gambeson dropped at his bare feet.

Dew-On-Heels sprung erect for fear that he might fall on her. This was a real fright, he was heavy enough to crush her comparably thin bones to splinters if he crashed down onto her from his full height.

Her palms clapped against his side and the broad mound of his shoulder. It was an accident, just a reflex to prevent herself from being smashed flat under him, but it certainly woke him from his fire hypnotized stupor. 

All the dark hair on his arms and chest stood on end as he recoiled from her and gawked as if she'd bitten him. She hadn't noticed until this point, but his pupils weren't round, they were stretched horizontally in ovals like the eyes of a toad.

The orc wasn't the only one shaken up by the unexpected contact and exchange of bodily sensation. Dew-On-Heels averted her gaze, because his eyes were wild and frightening, then gripped harshly at her arms and doubled over in a fit of gasping. His broken flesh was painful and the memory of it echoed through her body like the shockwave of a terrible boom. The gashes torn into his arms by the hooked tips of elven blades had seemed to burn, his ribs ached, and his dark flesh hid terrible bruises from her eyes. She felt every bit of his unwellness. How he was still standing, she didn't know.

He wasn't born to speak the way she could. Wherever they touched it was like his mind was screaming because he didn't know how to think quietly. It was the same for anyone unlike her, no one learns to think softly when they're always alone within themselves, nor can they know to limit the flow of their carnal being into their mind. Everything he felt she felt too, in full, each time they touched. It was clear that he'd deteriorated since their escape. The fire in his gut from a fight before they'd met had masked the seriousness of the injuries he now felt in their entirety.

Dew-On-Heels flinched at the growl he emitted as he picked up the garment he'd dropped much too close to the hot embers around the edge of the fire, but there was no retaliation for touching him. He did nothing but seat himself clumsily on a boulder just big enough to rest his ass without muddying it on the ground. He was still trying to hold out the quilted piece to catch the fire heat.

Dew-On-Heels watched him for a moment longer, then dared to inch a bit closer in a crouch. She moved like a tentative crab, waving an arm slowly and vocalizing a soft bleat to gather the warrior's attention. Again, she shivered at his eyes when he looked at her and averted her own. His intensity was too severe. Instead of his face, she looked to the worst of his wounds, a deep tear of the skin over the meatiness of his forearm. This was the one that continued to bleed on and off, looking like the seam of a cushion blown open around the stuffing. Instead of goose down escaping, his very life was draining out. 

He should be more worried about that rather than drying his clothes, so she pointed to it, being very careful not to touch him. He pulled in his elbow a bit anyway, not trusting how closely she'd sidled up. He huffed some noise at her, the abrupt jabbering that mouth speakers do, then seemed to go back to ignoring her.

Dew-On-Heels huffed noise back, nothing that could have meaning beyond underlining her frustration with him. She then pulled up a twig from under their feet, prodding at his kneecap with it to irritate his attention back to the wound she kept pointing to with a wagging finger. His leg jerked as if to snap at her to stop it, then he turned to loom over her and snarl with his rather impressive teeth glistening in the light of the fire. 

Dew-On-Heels dropped the twig and mashed her eyes shut in a cringe. She expected to be roared at again, perhaps struck. Orcs were supposed to have terrible tempers, weren't they?

Nothing happened.

When she opened her eyes she found him standing and snatching his belts and nearly dry tunic from where they hung. She would spend the next several minutes watching him cut strips of cloth from the bottom of the tunic with his hatchet, pour out his waterskin into a steel tankard that had hung from the back of his belt, then boil the cut strips inside it by leaving the cup half-buried in the embers at the edge of the fire.

He'd listened. 

When he seemed satisfied that the bandages he'd made were cooked clean, he negotiated the tankard out of the embers with a stick through the handle to drag it toward him to cool. 

He drank from what was left in the waterskin, but unexpectedly he grunted at her and offered it to her to drink from as well. Both of them were careful not to let their fingertips touch. It was a fragile truce. Dew-On-Heels had to be mindful not to gulp down every last drop. She hadn't realized how thirsty she was until the relatively clean water wet her mouth. 

She kept ahold of the waterskin as she watched the orc dry his makeshift bandages on a stick over the flames. The end of a strip was sacrificed to dab the filth of the canal out of his broken skin as he winced and snarled through his clenched maw of fangy teeth. 

Dew-On-Heels struggled to keep her hands in her lap. It was in her nature to feel sympathetic toward his pain and want to offer comfort, even if he wasn't a pleasant individual. His fingers shook as he struggled to wrap the thong of cloth around the wounds. He was clumsy with fatigue, so, again, Dew-on-heels' hands rose in her lap, clenched to ball themselves up as she restrained herself from helping, and dropped again. It was too frustrating to watch, so she turned her eyes back to the fire as he worked to staunch the flow of blood.

The grunting rumble of his mouth-speak buzzed in her ears again, which she first disregarded until it sounded again but somehow with breathy exhaustion woven into the sounds of his voice. She turned to look and found him fiddling with the untied ends of the bandage with his non-dominant hand. He grumbled his incomprehensible sounds again, and she didn't understand the meaning in them so gazed into his eyes instead. Tired. Defeated. Afraid. Untrusting. 

Down to his hands she peeked again, noting that his thumb and forefinger were quivering unnaturally. The defensive wounds on the opposite arm had weakened his grip, and the thumb was fat as if it were broken. He could be shamefully asking for help.

She wasn't sure, and she struggled to push aside the instinct to grab his right hand to ask directly, so she merely lifted her hands to inch closer and closer to see what he'd do. He did nothing but watch and cringe when contact was finally made.

It was near unbearable for both of them, but the bandage was tied. Names, or at least the feelings attached to them, were exchanged, and the bandages were tied into place. 

He gave her the gambeson again once it was dry enough, and he dressed into his dried clothes. Dew-on-heels thought it was too soon to smother out the fire and move on, but she couldn't argue his plans. His head was too loud to reason with, and speaking to him was exhausting after only a few minutes, even if it had been a great relief for her isolation.


	4. Petty Thievery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I found out pee was used to whiten medieval linens and I'm still mad about it.

-Vulmon-

The woman was able to walk on her own as the afternoon sun broke through the thinning woodlands and warmed their backs, and Vulmon was glad for that.

They were skirting the empty fields cleared for farmland, hiding just within the treeline to avoid being seen by shepherds or plowmen.

Wet-Feet, or whatever her name was, looked too conspicuous to be seen out in the open. A woman in rags looking like she was just dragged up from an oubliette? It begged too many questions Vulmon wouldn't be able to answer without incriminating himself. At best they'd accuse him of abusing the poor girl, at worst the human farmers would report sighting an orc warrior to Dominion soldiers at any of the nearby forts, and both of those outcomes were _if_ he weren't chased off with pitchforks first. 

The woman needed real clothing and the rags clinging to her needed to be discarded, to put it lightly. What Vulmon was looking for to remedy this problem was farmhouses.

The few times he and his father found it necessary to commit burglary, Vulmon hadn't enjoyed it. He always found himself too broad in the shoulders to move fluidly through cluttered human dwellings. He'd always knock something over with an elbow and his father, Dalrax, would be forced to either catch the displaced object in deft hands or defenestrate his son and himself before they were caught.

Vulmon felt a terrible pang of grief. His father had been alive a week ago, at his side, preparing a new, stronger handle for his war hammer which had been lost when the barge sank. Dalrax could have lived another forty years. The man had thrown himself over his son out of instinct when the abominable weapon was set upon them. 

Vulmon had stopped walking without realizing it, fists clenched at his sides and shoulders tense as he recalled the way his father had dropped his hammer and sprinted to him as the Death Lights erupted over the battlefield. He couldn't remember anything else past being knocked to his back and his father shielding his head and upper body with his own.

The rest was just an empty void in his mind, neatly buried somewhere in his brain so it couldn't harm him again. He couldn't remember what he did with the body when it was all over. He didn't know if the proper respects were paid. Shame crept into the grief he felt. What if he hadn't even sent a prayer to Vulkrid to bless his father's departing spirit? What if he'd forgotten? He tried to remember but couldn't.

"MmBaah?"

It was the woman, she would make sounds like a lamb from time to time if she was trying to get his attention.

Anger heated Vulmon's face. If she hadn't been there then his father would still be alive. The brutal mood rapidly dissipated as he turned to scowl at her. It didn't take more than looking at the ragged woman to remind himself that it wasn't her fault. It was the power sealed inside her that killed them, not her. She was not her power, whatever _it_ was, nor had she been the one wielding it. Any sensible person with eyes could see that she was as much a victim as the warriors who'd been reduced to ash. Vulmon could feel his sour expression soften to one of pity.

She tilted her head and her eyebrows turned upward worriedly as she reached toward the warrior, pausing to look into his eyes for permission before daring to touch him.

Vulmon cringed and tried to turn her down gently, shaking his head slowly and waving a hand subtly to refuse the gesture. He didn't want her to have to feel what was going on in his head; it would be an act of unnecessary cruelty. Wet-Feet pulled her hand back into the safety of the gambeson that she clutched tightly around herself, still looking at him with concern digging furrows into her dirty face. 

Vulmon tore his eyes away to focus on trying to spot a specific activity he hoped to find in progress around any of the farm homes they could spy upon from the woods. By the gods, _someone_ had to be doing the laundry. 

Vulmon looked to the rolling wheat fields past the trees and the humble farmhouses beyond. They were scattered fairly randomly on the hilly landscape. The challenge of the day would be sneaking through the trees growing in thin lines against old stone walls and woven twig fencing, edging close enough to the farmer’s hovels to, hopefully, snatch what Dewey-Feet needed.

The woman couldn't go with him, she was too noisy and clumsy. Vulmon would have to leave her somewhere, but that posed yet another problem: how she was supposed to protect herself in the event she is found? That required a little trust and leaving himself without much for his own self-defense.

First, the orc needed to find a safe place to hide her. She was barefoot so tucking her into the thorny brush was not an option unless he was interested in carrying her the entire way after she bloodied her feet.

Sighing heavily, Vulmon glanced about in search of the largest tree he could spy. Motioning for the girl to stay where she was standing, he fought through the underbrush to a great old oak and began to climb. There was a fork between the two eldest branches, and the trunk of the great tree was thick enough to hide the shape of his body from anyone who might pass on the nearby road. Between the fork of the old branches, he'd be able to peer out over a greater expanse of the farmland, and in this way, he'd also be able to find somewhere to hide the girl and select a home to plunder. It was a tough climb for his battered body. Every bruised muscle complained.

Below on the ground, Wet-Feet was making her bleating lamb noises again. Nearly losing grip, Vulmon managed to turn his head and upper body enough that he could wave a finger across his lips and shush her. She needed to stay quiet before they drew attention. Her scrunched-up face told him that she must be concerned for him again, which was fair. He could imagine that he looked like a cavalry had trampled him.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" Vulmon hissed, grumbling a moment later as he remembered that she didn’t understand spoken language.

He heard a whimper from down there but nothing else as he reached the apex of the trunk and began to look around for a suitable place to conceal her. There was a stand of trees that must have blown over in the most recent storm, the wilted leaves had not yet lost their green, and all of them were leaning on a single surviving tree. Was it particularly safe to stand under? No. For that reason, he was fairly certain nobody would go near it. That was where he would risk putting her for now.

Now, Vulmon peeked out between the branches toward the farms. He did not immediately see anyone bringing laundry out, but he _did_ smell piss from upwind, which should mean that someone was washing their whites.

Nasty business, washing white linens. This was why Vulmon's people preferred their clothing in red or brown. Just boil your brown underwear with some onion skins to renew the color and leave the piss for the pot. His current undergarments were bought before the battle in Coreltia from a human weaver, so they were white and beige. The tunic was beyond saving, but a boil in dye awaited the braies. Whitest whites aren't worth stinking up your whole world.

Down Vulmon came less gracefully and with a thud as he dropped from the trunk at the last five feet. Now to get the woman settled in the place he'd chosen.

Vulmon almost reached out for her hand, and in-kind she launched her hand for his, but at the last inch he pulled back and she paused. Both cringed but forgot about the blunder almost immediately as Vulmon led her in a winding path along a deer trail to the stand of fallen trees. Now, he had to figure out how to communicate to her that he wanted her to stay. It seemed simple enough, so far she understood basic hand gestures. Pointing at her and then pointing at the ground was probably enough, so, that's what he did. He also left his bow and quiver behind. A longbow was too big and awkward to bring with him.

Vulmon almost turned to leave but remembered that she was still unarmed and an easy target. He took from his belt the woodsman's hatchet that he kept on him at all times, freeing it from the sheath tied into his belts and handing it to her haft first.

The woman's eyes bulged at the blade as it was passed to her and she began to whimper. _Damn_. He forgot to anticipate that handing a non-warrior a weapon without any explanation as to what she would need it for might create confusion and worry.

Hesitantly and without letting go of the blade in his left hand just yet, Vulmon slid his right hand down the shaft and over her fingers. _Fuck_ , it still made him feel insane to have another person inside his head, thinking with him in this alien way. He thought it might feel worse to leave her alone there, panicky and uncertain why she was holding his hatchet for him.

She _was_ panicking, believing that he anticipated some kind of attack from adversaries otherwise unseen by her. Vulmon struggled to think clearly, to make her understand with nothing but a thought that she was neither in immediate danger nor entirely safe and should have this in case the need to protect herself arose.

Her eyebrows pinned themselves together and he felt her anxiety swell like a river after rain. It was as if it was his own panic causing his heart to quicken. Vulmon took a deep breath and tried again. This time he decided to just say it, what he meant, and hoped that the meaning in his words made enough sense in his mind that she could interpret what he was trying to communicate to her.

"Stay here, I'll be back soon, take this, if anyone bothers you, swing for the face," he spoke as clearly as he could and tried to phrase it as simply as possible so that he'd _think_ it as simply as possible.

The mental sensation which came next felt strange but it wasn't altogether unfamiliar, it was just out of place given the context. It was a full-body sensation and reminded him of the minute feeling of victory one achieves when a piece of a jigsaw puzzle is fitted into its proper place. 

The girl visibly relaxed, face softening and hands gripping the haft of the hatchet more confidently. _She understands._ Vulmon finally let go of the axe head.

The heaviness of the tool caused it to drop toward the ground before she gained a sense of its weight and caught it. Wet-Heels was soon holding up the hatchet with a stony face as if she were a miniature warrior herself. The very image of her holding it this way set off an unexpected explosion of amusement in Vulmon.

The hatchet which looked small and rather unassuming in his own hands looked like a full-sized war axe in the tiny woman's grip. She was holding it in both fists, too. She was so _small_ that she managed to make that little tool look like a real weapon. The orc chuckled, bit his knuckle in an attempt to stifle it but in the end, he could not hold in his laughter. This was the first time he'd laughed in what felt like an eon and it hurt his face. His bruised ribs didn't much care for the movement of his cackling either.

Wet-feet's brows fell into a look resembling angered embarrassment and under all the grime her cheeks flushed pink. That only made things worse. Vulmon was doubled over and desperately trying to hold in his chortles and barks with a hand flattened over his mouth. Better still, she stamped her foot and mewled at him sternly. 

Vulmon knew she couldn't possibly be aware of why she was being laughed at so her reaction was understandable. How was he supposed to explain the comedy inherent in the fact that she looked like a mouse in an oversized padded jacket with an axe? He couldn't, he knew he would not be able to articulate that in the way she needed him to. All Vulmon could do was leave her confused and annoyed under the fallen trees.

He could barely pull himself together enough not to howl at the moment of inopportune humor but managed to clench his jaw shut and motion one more time for her to stay there.

"I'll be right back," he struggled not to laugh through the words and found himself wiping tears from under his eyes. At least they weren't salted with his grief.

Now, he turned away and began making the short trek toward the road. Looking both ways and crossing the muddy path was the easy part, following the fragrance of urine wasn't that hard either. The Impossible aspect of this mission was keeping his six-foot and eight-inch tall body concealed enough not to raise alarm as he approached. He kept to the margins where wild grasses and shrubbery were left overgrown.

This route led him to a runoff pond circled in cattails, it was just East of the biggest farmhouse within sight. Beyond the reeds and water-grasses was a stone walkway. For the walkway, nothing fancier was spared than simply depositing some large, flattish rocks into the muddy dirt to save feet from sinking into it every time it rained.

The household produce garden was nearby, and Vulmon could smell onions and carrots being cooked down inside the house. An open window allowed the perfume of hot vegetable stew to drift to his nose. His guts gnashed on their emptiness to remind him that he hadn't eaten well in some time. _A home-cooked meal would be nice right about now,_ he thought longingly.

Still hiding in the brush with nothing more to survey except the East wall of the house, Vulmon decided to take a risk and emerge, hugging tight to the mud-daub wall as he made his way to the outer corner and had himself a look beyond it.

Vulmon's heart skipped a beat and thundered afterward, for he finally found who was washing their white linens today. It was two women, how old or young he couldn't tell for their backs were turned to him, and he thanked the gods for that. They stirred around a deep wooden basin of the foul fluid with a stick. Upon his second look around the corner, he found them hiking up their skirts to step into it and stamp their feet on the soaked fabric to really get that deep clean. _Repugnant_.

Vulmon retreated behind the corner again and moved toward that open window he had observed before. There he listened to see if anyone was inside tending the cooking pot. He wasn't about to steal clothing that was still soaked in piss, so the only option was to wait until they were done with the washing but that provided him an opportunity to find something else the girl needed. Shoes. He certainly couldn't have her running around barefoot from there to Coreltia.

Crouched under the window, Vulmon only heard the sound of the pot bubbling above the cooking fire. Gods, did that smell enticing. He salivated heavily enough to need to swallow lest the evidence of his hunger be permitted to ooze around his tusks and past his lower lip. If he didn't already know that he was going to leave this place with his arms full, he was quite certain that he'd succumb to the temptation to leave with nothing but a cook's mit and that pot of stew.

He heard no one come or go from the room, so he rose to peep in over the window sill. Not a soul in sight. He was thankful that most humans plastered their interiors white, so bright and easy to see.

Vulmon spotted the doorway which would lead out to where the ladies were stamping their feet around in a bucket full of piss and linen.

Now came the test, could he climb in through the window without making a racket? With both hands grasping the windowsill, knowing his chances of success may as well have been a flip of a coin, he began to heave himself up. Pain shot up his side as if something had bitten him but all he could do was grit his teeth and bear it in silence. If only it was easier to talk to the little woman, it would have been far simpler to give her a boost and launch her inside. But alas there he was, twisting himself into odd angles to fit his broad shoulders through the frame of the window. He crawled out on his belly over a table where vegetables had been cut and laid out in neat piles. His eyes burned from the miasma of diced onions.

He zeroed in on his target before he even began to ease himself to the floor. The table gave a creak as his full weight settled on the middle plank of the surface. His eyes snapped to the doorway, fearing that someone may have heard. They were still sloshing their feet and chatting away. He was safe, but the little leather shoes by the threshold were not. 

Low hanging fruit, they were. He sidled to the frame of the entryway and selected the better kept of the two pairs as casually as a child plucking aster blooms on a balmy summer day. Another retreat to hidden safety against a wall between the fireplace and the window as he let out a held breath. 

Vulmon could hear the women outside talking. One was named Cora, the other Sarah. Chatterboxes they were, discussing the attractiveness of the soldiers stationed at the forts. Typical, humans loved anything smooth and glittery as elves were. Vulmon pushed back the temptation to search the rest of the house. Yes, there could be something more of use to him and the girl but the risk of being caught grew by the second.

While tying the little shoes to his belt with their laces, he eyed another basket of garments sitting by a grain ark. The basket wasn't within line-of-sight to the women outside, so Vulmon reached for it and began plucking pieces out to examine them. Human women wore styles of clothing he wasn't familiar with, they seemed simple and went on in layers but he wasn't sure how many or in what order. He found himself shaking his head as he tried to guess at what the white strips of cloth he first pulled from the basket were for; maybe they had something to do with the head-dress most of them wore. He wasn't sure if that was entirely necessary, to cover his mute charge's head. He supposed it would depend on her preferences, which he then realized he should have asked somehow. Things in there were of every possible combination of colors. Some brown, some red, a kind of vomit yellow, and a type of green that made his eyes hurt, or was that the onions on the table? None of the pieces appeared to have matching mates for a single-color outfit.

Perhaps he didn’t need to wait for them to wash it all. These were all dirty but could be washed somewhere upstream if only he could figure out if he had enough of each type of thing. Weren’t there supposed to be a kind of leggings? What he'd slung over his arm, it was a kind of beet red, was an outer layer but no matter how far he dug he couldn't seem to find whatever was supposed to go under it. He feared that this meant the under-layer was what the women outside were stomping to death in the piss buckets. _Shit._ That meant waiting to steal them off the line when they were busy elsewhere like he’d originally planned. Vulmon stood from his crouch and planned to make for the window, but he found that he had an observer, eyes that may have been upon him for minutes without his realizing it.

It was a third woman, a dark tendril of hair spilling from her headdress thing and arms occupied with more linen until she dropped them at her feet. Vulmon was about to bolt for the doorway, believing that he was had and there was no longer any use in trying to remain discreet but the woman quickly held out one hand as if to calm a spooked animal. She brought a finger to her lips to beg his silence, then she peeled back her lower lip to show him her teeth. The thick stumps of her filed canines told him a secret; she was a half-orc.

She mouthed the words "What are you doing?"

Vulmon had no answer for her, all he could do was shake his head and risk a nervous glance at the window. He didn't think that she would announce his presence, but he didn't think she'd fancy him leaving with an armful of their clothes either.

She crossed the room and closed the door almost completely, leaving it just slightly ajar, then turned to grab Vulmon by the wrist before he could go for the window.

"Who are you? And why are you rifling in our laundry?!" she hissed, but didn't let him answer her questions "Is the war coming our way? Will there be fighting here? Has The Great Gathering freed the southern strongholds?"

She knew of the battalion and asked for its status as if she had hope for its victory. It made sense. If dominion soldiers ever learned of her parentage, she may be jailed and accused of spying. Vulmon had doubted her will toward him before, he certainly didn't trust her now, but he knew that she wouldn't turn him in to the local soldiers. The news he had of The Gathering, the battalion made up of warriors of all twelve clans, however, would curdle in her ears like hot milk.

"The Gathering is... Gone. They're all Dead. Slaughtered before a single clash of shields or spark of kissing blades," he said. It was the first time he'd said it in his own voice. He could almost taste the regret in the confession.

Her shoulders slumped, a hand rising to cover her mouth and hold in what Vulmon figured might have been a mournful sob, but she clenched her jaw and recovered with a mask of anger, very much a trait inherited from her orc half.

"How could you be alive if you would claim to know that? Were you there? Did you turn your back on the fight as a _coward?!"_ now she had disbelief and an accusation for him.

Any orcish warrior knows the answer to that line of questioning. He slipped his left arm out of the leathers and rolled back the blood-stained sleeve to show her the defensive wounds from the battle on the barge. There were no words spoken to debate this. She only nodded in satisfaction, looking toward the door to be sure her companions were still busy with their work before returning her gaze to the burglar in their shared home. 

"What is it that you want from here," she asked tersely.

Vulmon huffed in a type of relief that was not untainted by aggravated urgency. 

"There's a woman with me, she's an escaped Dominion prisoner, and she's damn close to nude,"

The woman grabbed the dirty clothes from his arm and dropped them back into the basket, then with a grip on his bicep she led Vulmon to another room off of the main one. They passed by a man sleeping atop a heap of bedding piled directly on the packed dirt floor.

The woman leading Vulmon just waved her hand uncaringly of the sleeping form and told Vulmon to "nevermind that lazy thing". They passed through this room and into another. On each side was a duck down mattress on split wooden frames.

"We wash clothes for those cursed soldiers, ever since they started taking our crops to feed their men we need every coin we can squeeze out of them. How tall is the girl with you?"

Vulmon gestured his best guess with his hand hovering about as high as the middle of his chest, she was quite small, at least a foot shorter than the woman who now stood before him. She pulled out the pins of her own headdress and folded them carefully into the white cloth after she took it off her head, a moment later pushing the wad of it into his hands. Her hair, reddish-brown like the pelt of the northern wooly rhinos, spilled over her shoulders in braids coming undone as she pulled out the ribbons holding them in place. She handed those off to him as well. She looked more like their people now, with her hair free.

"Take that, I have another that'll be washed today,"

"What's your name?"

"Tiffany,"

She then began rummaging on the other side of the room, throwing open the chest that sat at the end of the bed. The garments folded within it were no finer than the ones in the basket in the main room, but they were presumably cleaner. They were much too small for Tiffany.

"Sarah won't miss this old thing," she spoke through a guilty sigh as she tossed the outer layer at Vulmon and continued to dig, "are you traveling far?"

"I can't say," he told her truthfully. He still couldn't trust that her kindness would last after he left, half-orc or not. People could be bribed for information, or tortured.

She grunted irritably, tossing garments over his waiting arms so that she had hands free to reach under her bed and pull out a small crate. She was an apparent food hoarder and had a loaf of half-eaten bread under there. This she tossed over the clothes and folded them over on it.

"Then take that with you since you can't tell me how long you're going to be walking with that gut of yours growling like a mad bear," apparently she could hear his hunger.

Tiffany then threw open the window shutter and leaned out to peer about. She took the bundle of clothing from him and pushed him toward the window. 

"Now out, before my sisters see you, go!" she urged with a swat at his elbow.

This squeeze was no better than the first. The strain made his side burn terribly from within. Tiffany passed the bundle to him once he had his feet under him outside.

"Fear no man," she told him as the bundle exchanged hands.

"And dread no lands," he replied, surprised but pleased that she knew the saying of their people, "Thank you, Tiffany."

" _Go,_ warrior, before I change my mind about helping you,"


	5. Cold Bath

-Dew-On-Heels-

Dew-On-Heels was quite sure that the clothes the orc had in his hands when he returned to her were stolen. The bread, although likely pilfered as well, was a mild distraction from the guilt. It was broken in half and bolted down in dry mouthfuls as soon as they could spare a relatively safe moment on their walk.

The clothing stayed in a rolled-up wad under the warrior's arm. Dew had very much wanted to put them on immediately but the crank walking ahead had not allowed her to so much as touch them, so it continued to be a rather long and miserable trek through the chilly woodlands. He did, however, let her put on the shoes. They were a tad loose and she could feel that they had warped to fit a different set of feet, but that's better than walking on soles that had lost all of their calluses and toughness.

When they were met with a stream, Dew-On-Heels thought the orc meant for them to cross it. No, they stopped and he turned to face her with his expression twisting and rough hands clenching at his sides. She knew better than to reach out and ask, for seldom did he try to speak with her properly unless he absolutely had to. He shook his head and looked away from her, doing his jabbering as if to himself. Mouth talkers just love to hear themselves make noise, don't they? He _did_ look troubled. Ah, now he was waving his fingers in the air again, jabbing one at her then at the bubbling stream. 

Dew-On-Heels looked to him, then to the water. She knew he meant for her to do something, he had a point in all this fuss, but in her frustration and perhaps with an added dose of dry humor, she thought she could test his patience and see if she could convince him to be more specific about whatever it was he was requesting.

Dew-On-Heels gathered up the bottom of the gambeson and stepped down into the brook and did nothing but stand there ankle-deep in the frigid water to watch him expectantly. _You really need to do a better job than all this pointing._

It was a staring contest now, both looking at each other quite blankly and waiting for the other to do something. Dew-On-Heels tried her hand at his finger-speak now, tapping her brow and holding up a palm toward the sky as if to say _I don't know,_ because she didn't. She didn't know what he wanted because he had given her nothing in the way of instructions. 

He then let his head fall back with a deep groan. Now, he moved, raking the stumpy claws he had in place of fingernails through the strip of dark hair he had atop his head and clumped toward the edge of the brook. There he squatted as he shucked off his leathers and pulled up his sleeves. He leveled a very bitter looking glance at her, pointing at her and then pointing at himself before sinking his hands into the cool waters, pulling up handfuls to splash over his head and scrub through his hair. Now he coolly looked at her, holding up his palm the same as she had. _Get it_ , the gesture implied. Oh, she got it. He wanted her to wash, but was he just going to stand there and watch? No, no, _no,_ that was unacceptable.

Now that she understood what he wanted and presumably why he had not given her the clothes yet, she was reminded of her dirtiness and longed to be clean. She'd become frightfully accustomed to her own filth and it was astonishing that she had forgotten to let it bother her up until this point. She had forgotten what clean felt like, or that she deserved to be clean. Any water would do, no matter how cold, because her skin itched and crawled like she was covered in ants as she was reminded of the sweat and waste encrusted to her body. She _needed_ a bath, but she didn't want to be watched.

He was still squatted there leering at her. _Absolutely not, you cannot watch me you hairy brute_ , she readied her scolding for him as she briskly scuttled out of the brook and waved both hands furiously at him.

That got him up, as he certainly didn't want his mind touched. She also snatched the bundle of clothing from where he'd set it down. She wanted to put that on as soon as she was done scouring that terrible prison and the faint traces of those despicable leather gloves from her skin but first, he had to _go away_ and let her be.

-Vulmon-

The woman had chased him off behind a tree, and to be fair, he didn't mind that much. He'd have bathed her himself if he absolutely had to but since she appeared to understand what she needed to do and wanted him to have no part of it, he felt no guilt in his relief that it wasn't his responsibility to clean her. Orcs are not modest, they don't have to be when they're home with the tribe. Many will wear as much or as little as is comfortable for the weather of any given day. Before the wars, all they had to do was protect trade caravans and sell the textiles they made themselves from rhino wool. They weren't expected to dress a certain way or not, they were Guardians of Commerce and no one dared to question the dress of warriors who made trade across all of the Six Realms both possible and safe. That was before Vulmon's time, though, he felt that the histories passed down to him was a good explanation for the difference in demeanors among the many peoples over nudity. Putting his hands all over that filthy woman's body to scrub her clean, though? It would have felt lewd given that humans don't do that with other humans unless they're married and sometimes not even after such a union. He also didn't want to get her nastiness in any of his open wounds.

Vulmon could hear the lapping of the water as she splashed it on herself as well as her whimpers and sighs. The waters _were_ chilly today. _She might be blue by the time she's done,_ he imagined. No matter, she'd warm up quickly in the borrowed set of clothes, he hoped. After a while, the splashing and grunting of the little creature knelt in the water intensified, and Vulmon began to worry. A plaintive yowl caused his heart to race. 

He rose from where he sat in a cushion of spruce needles to lean around the tree she'd banished him to, just to make sure nothing was wrong. She was alone there, squatted nude in the flowing water. There no one else and no forest creature within sight, which was good. Vulmon cringed as he observed her. The first thing his eyes were drawn to was raw sores under her shoulder blades and lower spine, these were probably from lying strapped down in that damned weapon for much too long. The grime didn't seem to be coming off either. Darker splotches mottled her back. She examined similar stains on her hands and arms with an evident sense of horror curling her lips back against her blunt teeth.

She glanced over her shoulder and their eyes met. Her brows dropped over her glistening wet eyes and she plunged both hands into the water, pulling them back up with handfuls of silt and pebbles. He knew better than to keep staring. He ducked behind the tree again just before her handfuls of the stream bed hit the trunk of the tree in a spray of pelting debris. _Shy humans_.

More splashing, more whining like a kicked mutt, and finally the sound of rustling cloth. She was dressing herself, good thing she apparently knew how to put it all on herself because he certainly didn't know.

It took a few minutes more before he heard the mewls and vocalizations that she typically called him with. Now, with a bit of apprehension, he peeked around the tree trunk to be sure she didn't have more handfuls of pebbles for him; she didn't. She stood there dressed neatly but with her hair wet and still tangled in dense mattes. She was simply standing there wringing her hands in the skirts of the outer dress, sniffling with her face twisted in a closed-mouthed grimace. Vulmon's brows furrowed. She still looked filthy, face all speckled in dirt. 

"Bang-up job you've done," he muttered sarcastically.

Irritably, the orc stomped his way over to inspect her more closely and licked a fingertip to scrub it across her scarred patterned cheek. _Oh_ , he'd forgotten about the thought link that would come with the contact.

First off, the dirt didn't come off because it wasn't dirt; it was just skin, normal human skin in a shade that sat somewhere in the middle of the typical human scale of pigmentation. Humans come in colors anywhere from white as a toddler's milk teeth to the darkest umber. Whatever the shade, humans were always somewhere on that varying scale of brown and always one solid color save for soles and palms. Wet-feet was all over the scale, a great patch in the middle of her face, as well as her eyebrows, was white as the linen under her bright orange dress. Next was a ring of worryingly yellowish flesh that looked almost like jaundice bordering that white, and then toward her jaw and hairline, she was a healthy beige.

Perhaps he should not have touched her. He didn't need to see that her eyes were glassy and watery to know that she was deeply upset, for an image bombarded him over and over, occurring in tandem with his own thoughts. It was a face, the very one he was looking at, but completely different. It was indeed Wet-Feet appearing and disappearing in his mind but with no condition of the skin, no white and sickly blotches, and brunette hair pulled back into braids that clung to her scalp in whorls at either side of her head. It was a memory, how she knew she should look. She was losing the color of her skin, and it terrified her. Before he could do anything to stop her, she cupped either side of his face in her trembling hands and peered at herself through him. _That_ was a wild and unexpected _thing_ to experience.

He could feel it, or shall we say think it, the heavy realization which screamed _I don't know that face, I don't know her_. Wet-Feet couldn't recognize her own face as it now was. Vulmon backed off, grasping each of her wrists as gently as he could as not to upset her more, and pushed her hands away to break the contact.

It could have been the magic, and it having been abused without her consent, which was stealing the color of her skin. Magic _always_ has consequences, some may even be deadly for the caster. It was odd, for sure, but not all that surprising given that whatever her power was, it was strong enough to fell an entire army like wheat to the reaper's scythe. She may be lucky that she wasn't dead but if the trauma showed on her skin like this, who knows what sorts of internal damage it may also have done.

These thoughts among others needed to be put away, for pointing out any of these facts were sure to frighten her more. Gods forbid she found out what the purpose of having been in that weapon was. As far as Vulmon could tell, Wet-Feet had no idea what all the torture she'd endured was for. Unfortunate as that was, knowing the truth could be worse. He certainly couldn't imagine that finding out you were used as a component for a killing machine would do anything good for your mood. He tried to put it all out of his mind, somewhere safe and out of reach. Her hair was still a problem that needed to be addressed. There was no way he could stuff those clumps underneath the coif.

He didn't own a comb because he didn't have to. Vulmon's hair was shorn to the scalp on both sides leaving only a diamond-shaped tuft on the very top as a sort of decoration. If her clumps were to be untangled then it would have to be done with hands, and it appeared as though she had tried what with the few rough and partially torn locks hanging at the sides of her head.

Vulmon gestured to her head very generally and held up a palm, it was an expression that they'd so far established as a way to indicate that one was asking a question. She shook her head and pulled against the tangles with her tiny piebald fingers. It didn't appear that she knew what to do with it or where to begin. Steeling himself against the feeling he knew would come the moment he touched her again, the orc drew in a deep breath and let it go slowly before dropping a hand on her shoulder.

After a moment of deliberation, she sat on her knees in the fetal position by the creek with her head hanging over the edge of the water as Vulmon tried to pick through the tangles. She didn't want to cut it, as he initially offered to do by imagining himself hacking through it with his hatchet, so an effort was made to save _some_ length of her hair.

In short, it was unmanageable. Even Vulmon expected better results but his large fingers couldn't quite get in between the tightest of the knots. Worse still, sweat, grime, bodily waste, and who knows what else had saturated into the massive pads of matted hair. Every time he started to break one open it made an impressive stink of shit, stress, and urine. Dewey-feet's mind was drowning in embarrassment and shame from the smell. Her face was covered in both of her hands and she was tense. Vulmon knew that she was weeping as discreetly as she could. Every time he couldn't avoid touching the skin of her scalp, the second-hand sensation of her stinging eyes caused his own eyes to well up as well.

Finally, an urgent thought driven by frustration entered his mind and made itself very clear with the image of the terrible clumps detached from her head and floating downstream. _Just cut it off! Get it off me!_ was the concept that her imaginings spoke to him. 

The cutting of hair is not a subject that is taken lightly by Orcs. Most do not grow out their hair these days. The vast majority of full-blooded orcs are near-constantly engaged in combat to protect their territories. Short hair is harder to grab and pull on which meant those who cut usually had an occupation rife with violence, or were living through a time of great trauma, or both. In times of peace, only hunters wore their hair short as their occupation involved the killing of otherwise innocent game so the hair is cut out of respect for the lives they must take. There is a difference between a warrior and a civilian, some civilians still wear their hair long, but most do not in this age. There are many people cropping their hair as a sign that they are willing to protect their land by any means.

To cut this woman's hair was, in a way, to acknowledge the violence in how they'd met one another and her trauma. It was getting harder to keep her at arm's reach. Awkwardly, Vulmon tried to comfort her, but the gesture was clumsy and came as little more than a promise not to accidentally knick skin as he brandished his hatchet and began to formulate a battle plan against the nasty hairballs.

Gentle pulling helped him to find the root of the hairs, and Vulmon tried his best to make sure that he didn't cut closer than a half-inch from her head. Little by little the careful cuts revealed brown hair peppered in white. He heard a soft sob after his pinky finger brushed against her forehead and revealed what he was seeing to her. It was a struggle to catch his stray thoughts about what he knew of magical bodily harm and the truth of her captivity before they could be passed to her. She didn't need to know, at least not now. It only took ten or fifteen minutes before that hair was indeed floating downstream, looking hideously grotesque until it left their line of sight.

Now, she truly resembled a shorn sheep as well as sounded like one. The poor thing looked even smaller without any hair on her head. At least the coif would hide that. She began to wash her scalp of the stink that the hair left behind, and leaving her to that, Vulmon decided it was time to wash himself. He still smelled fishy from that damned dunk in the canal.

Again, orcs aren't modest, and Vulmon couldn't give a shit whether she looked at him while he was naked and bathing. Off came the cuirass, leather archery sleeves, his unstrung bow and quiver, tunic, and even the braies, then he waded out and sat right in the middle of the creek to have a good scrub.

Almost cutely, the little human yipped and skittered off behind the very same tree that she'd banished him to when she had been washing up.


	6. Horse Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT UPDATES AND FIXES!
> 
> 1:A proper map of The Six Realms has been drawn up and will appear at the top of the first chapter after some photo editing and touch-ups.
> 
> 2: Some directional errors will be corrected in the earlier chapters.
> 
> 3: All instances of the word bonnet will be replaced with the word coif.
> 
> 4: All narration POVs will be labeled accordingly where they start.
> 
> 5: These changes will occur gradually over the course of November.

-Dew-On-Heels-

Dew-on-heels had been hard at work scratching the last of the uncleanliness from her greasy scalp but when she cleared the stray droplets from her eyes she discovered what may have been the rarest of all sights, a green full moon.

What a view, but not one that was expected or welcomed. It wasn't that Dew-On-Heels was repulsed by the nudity, she simply hadn't been ready to open her eyes to the vision of that much bare skin. Just when she was starting to feel that the orc warrior was reasonable and predictable, he goes and does something like this. He’d just stripped himself naked, plopped down in the middle of the creek, and started splashing water about himself like a bathing bird.

Somehow, the energy of his nakedness was impressive. Even nude and unprotected against the elements, he was not something she'd ever want to have to fight. This must be why orcs were so feared, they simply had that titanic presence about them.

Dew-On-Heels sprinted to the spruce tree to hide on the other side of it and shoved her numb hands underneath her armpits for warmth. The water had been cold as a witch's tit, however in the world he could possibly be making pleased noises over there in that practically glacial flow, she may never understand.

At least her clothes were warm, compared to the rag she used to wear anyway, and that was nice. She tried to occupy her mind with thankfulness for decency rather than the image of the orc's hairy backside scalded into the surface of her eyes. These clothes were certainly different than what she was used to at home. These had sleeves which were not something her people wore unless it was winter. Her kind needed to be able to sit arm-in-arm and have discussions, brush fingertips across cheeks or the back of the neck, allow their bare calves to rest crossed over another's leg when seated in a circle over a family dinner. The way they dressed was influenced by the way they spoke, so too were their gestures of affection, the way names were given, and the way laws were decided. The way they connected with one another had affected everything about who they were and how they lived. Although these clothes served their purpose, she couldn't help but miss the ways and the dress stylings of her people.

She heard this rasping, grinding noise, like a wood file on a bone. It chased away her longing for home for that moment and teased her curiosity. Dew-On-Heels thought about looking around the tree to see what he was doing but hesitated at the memory of his bottom. His very firm looking bottom and mercilessly toned thighs. Anxiously, she massaged her temples until the image exited her mind. 

"Mmnngh!"  _ Why did he have to do that?!  _ she thought with a groan.

The sound of his voice startled her with a jerk. It was as if he were replying to her grumbles of frustration. She had forgotten that mouth speakers always respond to voice noises with more voice noise.

The grinding noises had stopped, but footfalls crunching on the damp leaf litter of the forest floor replaced the sound. He was coming and Dew-On-Heels found herself in a mild panic. What if he was still naked? She didn't want to see the  _ whole  _ orc. They certainly didn't know each other well enough for that level of  _ knowing _ . She clapped her hands over her eyes to wait for the inevitable. She could sense him near her, hearing his breath and the sound of feet shifting against dry spruce needles just to her left but she refused to look.

A string of his babbling sounded, and she could only reply with a hum acknowledgment that she knew he was there. What he’d said she certainly couldn't figure but she couldn't imagine he’d have had anything interesting to ask since all he came over for was, presumably, to check out why she was making noises to herself. She didn't want the embarrassment inherent in reaching out with her eyes clenched shut to tell him directly that his nudity was making her uncomfortable. 

The sound of that scraping, grinding, awful noise picked up again, closer now and practically in her ear. She couldn't stand it and it made her teeth itch, so with substantial trepidation, she cracked her fingers apart and opened just one eye to peer up at the man she knew was staring at her. At first, she wasn't quite sure what she was seeing. He had a length of steel in his hand, just a seven or eight-inch sliver really, and he was scrubbing it against those impressive tusks of his. Dew-On-Heels was so confused by the sight that she forgot to take note of whether or not he was still nude.

The orc lifted an eyebrow at her, but soon after shook his head and wandered back toward the edge of the water. Well, now she was much too curious about what he was doing to his teeth. It didn't look healthy, that's for sure; scraping against them with metal.

She crept around the trunk of the tree on her hands and knees to look at him, and he  _ was  _ still naked now that she gazed upon him properly at a distance. His bare ass was seated on a small boulder with his feet in the creek and his back facing her, but he was still scratching away at his teeth with that little metal... Aha! Dew-On-Heels thought she understood, now fairly certain that he had a file in his hand. The only thing she could equate to that was the maintenance of horse teeth. The rough edges of a horse's grinding molars are sometimes filed smooth when they overgrow so that they don't cut the inside of the cheek or make wearing a bit painful. Perhaps the tusks of orcs just grow and grow and never stop. 

Dew-On-Heels now vaguely remembered the pig farmer she used to live down the road from, and how she had been told by that farmer’s son that they cut the budding tusks from the jaws of piglets when they're young so they can't hurt each other when they're adults. Apparently, pig tusks would just grow indefinitely if left in place. 

Dew-On-Heels had also once seen the skull of a horse and could remember how strange the molars looked, so there was a new curiosity within her to see the inside of the orc's mouth. That would probably be stepping over a line, though, so she put the thought out of her head and retreated behind the tree to wait for him to finish washing and get dressed again.

She occupied herself by stacking twigs into the shape of a miniature house. She was just beginning to weave spruce needles through little sticks she'd poked into the dirt to make a tiny fence when she heard his jawing with a worrying level of urgency in his sounds. What could he want now?

His calling seemed further away than the last spot she’d seen him. Did he want them to move now? Had he already dressed and started walking? She wasn't sure, so she stood and peeked around the tree for the final time; abandoning the little stick house she built. Dew-On-Heels didn't immediately see him, so she began to worry.

"Bah? Mm?" she called out, searching for a response so that she could figure out what direction to go in order to find him.

Another deep call erupted from upstream but not  _ too  _ far up the icy flow. Her hands and feet were still numb from her bath and she often stumbled, legs weak and ungainly from long months of disuse. She only wanted to sit and rest, but she kept calling and he kept calling back to lead her to him.

What she discovered was turbulent water and a small waterfall perhaps only two feet high, but it had created a large bowl-shaped depression where deeper waters sheltered fish. Ah! There was the orc, flush against the bank, and stirring up sediment with his feet sinking in the muck at the bottom.

When their eyes met he tipped his head back in a motion which implied that he wanted her to come closer. She had walked past his clothes on the way there, so she knew he was still naked. Surely, her discontent showed on her features for he rolled his eyes and simply tilted his head back again, more aggressively this time, and he punctuated the move with gruff gibbering. The closer she got the stranger his behavior seemed to be. It  _ looked  _ like he had his hand jammed into the muddy bank as he stood there, waist-deep in the creek bowl. She shuddered at the idea of being chilled all over in unpleasantly cool water like that.

He beckoned her closer, closer still, and with the hand which wasn't currently socketed in the mud, he lifted one finger and made hard eye contact. Then, he gulped down a breath and ducked under the rippling surface of the murky water to dig at the bank with both hands.

What the hell was he doing? Dew-On-Heels didn't know, couldn't know. Oh, she'd never seen anything like it. She thought he was going to drown! She knew he couldn't swim, and although the water was only waist-deep, her concern still felt very real to her. She reached down into that water, searching blindly through the murk to find him with her hands. Her hand flattened against his spine.

Through him, she felt the coldness of the water now all over her body as if she were in the water right next to him, and then there was his ever howling-loud brain that felt decidedly unhappy with the distraction forced upon him with her searching hands and questioning thoughts. A great bubble of air was released as he thoughtlessly shouted underneath the water, and she shouted too because she could feel that something had bitten down ferociously around his hand.

Up he came in an impressive splash with something flailing at the end of his arm as he gripped its cheek. The creature was fleshy, the length of her leg, and with whiskers around its cavernous maw. He wobbled as he struggled to maintain his balance in the muck and inadvertently slammed the wiggling beast down into her arms as she shrieked with surprise. She and the catfish were independently experiencing similar thoughts;  _ What the fuck just happened? _

-

The orc showed remarkable skill in gutting and cleaning the fish speedily; it all looked as though it were simple muscle memory. Thankfully he'd dressed himself before getting to work preparing this wild meal. The guts all went in a wet pile, and she could have done without watching how the heart of the fish kept on beating in the mess of gore. She never enjoyed that aspect of wet-life in all her years fishing for leisure with her father. Her father had thought it was interesting, the innards still working long after dismemberment, she'd thought it was grotesque and a bit sad.

She decided to get up to fetch wood to burn so he could cook it but found his hand slimy from the fish lifted swiftly and held out in her way. His hand hovered and fingers flexed with his uncertainty, face twisted in a cringe at the problem of trying to communicate something to her with hands busy and dirty. She remedied that by simply pressing her palm to his forehead.

_ Where are you going?  _ He spoke to her clearest when he made his mouth speech with his thoughts.

_ Firewood,  _ she replied, imagining a crackling campfire.

_ Don't go far.  _ Then, he leaned back out of her reach and shook off the feeling with a dramatic shiver. All of the hair of his arms stood on end from chills.

It was still chaos in there, within his head, and she still winced with the horrid sensation of his battered body each time they touched, but that had been the smoothest exchange so far. It was encouraging.

The last person to speak with her was an elf, a fleeting caretaker-and-charge relationship. That lady had been kind and tried her best, but during their time together the elf was never able to shake off the feeling of being invaded with each moment of conversation. The elf woman had been the one to explain to Dew-on-heels that her parents had died, but she couldn't offer details on how and why since she hadn't known the specifics. Dew-on-heels couldn't remember that woman's face, only the sound of her raging screeches when the soldiers came and took her away. That had been the first time she knew that she was in danger among the tall-eared people. 

The orc wasn't much better at this form of communication, but he was more apt to experiment with his own inner dialog until something worked. He apparently learned through repeated failure, but somehow that was endearing of him, his willingness to shove aside ego to fail catastrophically until he gets it right.

Dew-On-Heels heeded the orc's warning not to wander too far, she had felt how anxious he was despite his busyness preparing food. The catfish had merely been an opportunity too good to pass up. They needed to eat but, yet again, there would be no stopping to camp here. It was hard to glean information from him, as his thoughts came and went in wild bursts, but it was impossible to miss his intention to keep moving. Staying on the move was a desire kept at the forefront of his mind at all times for fear of what might be following them. A valid concern, which was also tied to his request that she stayed close to him.

Everything was damp but ‘tis the season for dampness, so there wasn't much wood to find that was dry. The best she could do was the odd stick or fallen branches that hadn’t soaked through or been sitting in a puddle. There were so many puddles, too many to avoid, so she sat on a log and took off the thick stockings which enveloped her feet so that she could wear just the leather shoes for now. Nothing felt more grotesque than wet stockings. As she sat on that rotting log, there was nothing to look at but the puddle under her feet as she put her shoes back on and slung the stockings over a shoulder. It was still painful to look at her reflection, the bright areas of skin which simply shouldn't be there, but now as the shock of it all receded she could be thankful for one thing. Her eyes had not changed and were still brown, dark, and warm like home in the evening when the fire begins to go out. They were like the eyes of both of her parents. She missed the love in their gaze and tried to find them in her reflection.

She had to remind herself that time, and elf soldiers, wait for no one no matter how grief-stricken, so she continued her search for firewood. When she returned to where she left the orc, she had a modest bundle of sticks and twigs under her arm and he had the catfish peeled of its skin and skewered on a sturdy broken tree branch held erect between a few stones. He was by the water washing his hands when she bleated for his attention and dropped her cargo.

He acknowledged her with a grunt and made his way over as she arranged her spoils in the way her mother had taught her in order to build a steady fire to cook food in the wilderness. The orc had a different opinion, because of course he did, and rearranged her configuration of the wood before lighting it. She couldn't contest it, she wasn't in the mood to have a poorly argued debate with the stubborn man, so she did nothing but watch as he did his work and began to turn the fish over the flames.

Dew-On-Heels felt exhausted. The chaos of the day had caught up and crashed down upon her. It felt like longer than one day since her escape, more like weeks, and all she could seem to want was to close her eyes. The smell of the fish roasting kept her awake for a little while, and so did the worry that if she laid down she'd muddy up her new clothing, but eventually, she began to doze anyway. Still sitting upright with her chin rested on her knees, she fell in and out of messy half-dreams and none of them very pleasant. Often she saw the faces of Dominion soldiers and the shape of their helmets which appeared horned to accommodate their ears. She hated them; deeply.

A nudge at her shoulder roused her back to semi-alertness. The orc had prodded her with a knuckle, touching her where she was clothed so that there would be no unanticipated skin-to-skin contact. Kind of him, that.

He held out his hand, and in it, he offered the small white coif that she'd forgotten to put on earlier due to her hair posing a problem for it. She took it, a second later cringing regretfully when their fingers slid across one another.

He was thinking about her hair when they touched, and he felt bad for having to cut nearly all of it off. For him, there was an upsetting connotation to the fact that it was now short, but she couldn't quite untangle the reason from such a brief moment of contact. Dew-On-Heels put on the coif the best she could figure she was supposed to and tried to smile at him reassuringly. It wasn't his fault that the hair was gone; but because it smelled so badly she was glad it was.

When the fish was cooked through to satisfaction, both of them set themselves to work plucking fat morsels to pop into their mouths. Many bones were spat into the cooking fire. 

So long had it been since Dew-on-heels last enjoyed a wild-caught fish that even unseasoned, it tasted better than anything else she'd ever consumed in her life. Soon she felt somewhat overstuffed and had to refuse when her new companion offered more. She wasn't sure they could eat the whole thing, it was a damn huge fish, but the orc ravenously continued picking meat from the bones until all that was left was the spine and head. He was an enormous being, so it made sense that he needed to eat heartily to maintain himself. Dew-On-Heels found her grogginess doubled as she watched him toss the carcass in the flames to burn; a full belly after a brutal day will do that. She missed her bed, and the hearth of the fireplace, and her home as a whole.

When the warrior stood he enjoyed a full-bodied stretch and tilted his head harshly until his neck gave a crackle that made Dew-On-Heels squirm. As if he hadn't just finished eating a heavy meal of nothing but fish meat, he began to energetically search out and pick up any belongings dropped or discarded. He picked up his tooth file and put that away in its proper place in a bag on his belt. The gambeson was picked up from where Dew-On-Heels left it, turned over in his hands, and glowered at. She felt a new wave of shame at the matter of how dirty she'd been when they met and internally bemoaned the fact that the stench would still follow them on that piece of clothing. He rolled it up and tied it as if it were a bedroll.

His quest to make sure they left nothing behind was very brief but thorough. Everything was bundled up, put away, or tied to his person, with the exception of one item. It was presented to Dew-On-Heels on the end of a stick to avoid touching it. It was the pathetic excuse for a nudity covering smock that she'd worn within her tiny prison. Just looking at it infuriated her. Her anger made her face hot but her heart cold as winter's rage. Dew-On-Heels snatched the stick from his hand and flung the lot of it into the fire. It deserved to burn and be forgotten. The orc only nodded approvingly and gave a single grunt.

As if the heavens above could reflect her mood, a thick blanket of cloud cover had spread across the skies to render the day both cold  _ and  _ bleak as they both kicked dirt over the fire to smother it.

So, the endless march continued.

Dew-On-Heels did not enjoy walking on a full stomach, and could hardly believe that the orc still had the energy in him to keep going and going. Maybe it was fear that drove him on, or stubbornness. He seemed the type for the latter.

The roar of thunder sent an unexpected jolt of fright through Dew-On-Heels. A storm was coming, but she felt that it was strange how the familiar sound of a coming downpour caused her heart to race and her hands to tremble. She always liked the sound of storms, the feel of rain on her skin, and the light show which comes with inclement weather. The orc at her side stopped on his path and glanced upward toward the milky grey skies with worried eyes and licked his lips nervously.

Lightning crashed and the world boomed again. This time Dew-On-Heels' knees gave out under her with fright. The warrior at her side instinctively threw out a hand to catch her under an arm before her bottom hit the ground. He sighed heavily and gazed up into an angered sky through the sparse trees as Dew-On-Heels clung as tightly as she could to the sleeve of his arm. He huffed out his mouth speak, and from the sound of it, she thought she knew what he'd said without touching his skin directly.

"Please don't rain."


	7. Shelter

-Vulmon-

Yes, the rain came. Yes, it drenched them. No, they did not find shelter in time to avoid the gales and the Dewy-foot's terror. 

The sounds of the storm, thunder cracking and the wind whipping in her ears, apparently sounded almost exactly like the inside of the weapon she’d been caged within whenever it had been turned on. Vulmon couldn’t touch her when she was like this. It was mind destroying and put him in a state of such frantic dread that he couldn’t function. He had to wrap her in the gambeson again and carry her to safety. If only he knew where to find safety in the first place. 

One positive, the brutality of the rains could wash away their tracks through the woodland but in one day they'd been twice soaked to the bone. This was a mess and at every turn this course Vulmon was on presented a new deadly challenge. He was now concerned that the human woman in his charge would die by the cold of the fast approaching night.

The only thing he could do was to follow the stream as it swelled. Visibility was poor but by sheer accident, he found a fisherman's cabin. It had long been in a state of disrepair and, with any luck, disuse. The door had warped so severely that it couldn't be opened by its latch. It was fused into the frame by swelling and shrinking in the varying humidity of many springs and summers. Still gripping the woman in his arms, Vulmon had to kick the door and pound it with a shoulder to force the frame to surrender the swollen planks. Inside was musty, the air reeked of mildew and the ancient ash of a wood stove but it was relatively dry save for a few leaks in the roof that bowed worryingly inward.

With dark skies outside and nothing that Vulmon could burn for light, they would be near blind to whatever the shack held until the rains passed. Vulmon set the woman on her feet and groped into the darkness as he led her inside, unsure and untrusting of what he might find within these four small walls.

A surface was what he found first, and he decided that it must be a table. He felt around the edges of that as he moved through the room. Next, his toes found the corner of a wooden box. An involuntary grunt left him. He shoved that further under the table with his heel and slowly waved his hand outward in an arc to discover more of the space. He found angling gear against the wall, rods, which was expected given that the shack was built just out of reach of the stream's high water line.

Vulmon could hear the woman shivering and whimpering behind him and felt pulling on the back of his cuirass as she held onto him, likely not wanting to feel lost in the darkness of the place. Vulmon could only imagine barbed hooks and all manner of things fine for catching a meal in the rich rivers of Hecstien but not so good for discovering with your foot or fingers. 

A flash of lightning outside revealed a window and for a fleeting moment the room was illuminated. Vulmon swore he’d seen _teeth_ glistening in the gloom ahead of him. Time and the world around him felt unreal as he reacted, swinging his fist with a roar of surprise. Wet-feet shrieked in confusion as Vulmon’s move to protect himself caused a cascade of unseen objects crashing and clattering to the floor. What he struck hadn’t felt alive. It felt cold, stiff, and too light for flesh. It was as if whatever he'd swung at had been full of sawdust.

Another bolt of lightning, and for just a split second he could see what he’d slugged in its un-living head. A stuffed and mounted River Cat, permanently posed with a ferocious grimace on its face and a taxidermied salmon under its claws. It lied on its side among the contents of an overturned box of spools and tangled balls of line. 

Vulmon let a held breath escape his chest slowly and reached blindly behind him to find the girl. She was crying against his back now, and gods, he didn’t want to touch her when she was like this but he wasn’t sure he could stand to listen to her voicings of terror any longer. He found her hand and gripped it. Her immediate fears were like a punch to the gut, all she had been able to imagine was the looming, languid movements of a silhouetted form resembling an elf soldier lurking in the dark with them. It made sense, that the thing she most feared would be shaped like an elf. No, it wasn’t an elf, and they were reasonably safe, for now anyway. Trying to convince her of that was not only frustrating but felt as though they were playing tug-o-war.

It became too painful and disorienting to calm her, so he had to leave her seated on a chair found next to the table as he tried to figure out what to do about their other problem: their soaked clothing.

He searched the surface of the table blindly to be sure it held no hooks or barbed baits. There was a stack of pots that wound up broken when he knocked them to the floor, because of course he knocked something over and caused the woman to wince audibly.

Then, he started pulling off his clothes for the third time that day and threw everything over the table and the other chair, leaving only his slacks and undergarments still soaked upon him. He had to instruct Damp-Feet to do the same, but that involved touching her. He didn't think she'd like the idea of being nude and trapped in a small room with him. So he snatched his tunic from the chair. It was the driest thing he had, for the chest and back had been protected from the rain by his leathers. He still had to wring out the sleeves and the fast deteriorating bottom of it, but if he could convince her out of her sopping wet clothes to keep her from freezing he'd try to convince her to throw this on for her dignity.

Once more stretching a hand into the inky air within the shack, Vulmon searched for her. She wasn't on the rickety old chair he'd left her on, but he could hear the dripping of water from her wet form and the rustling of cloth nearby. He found her ear with the back of his hand and was glad he hadn't been waving his arms too wildly in the dark. 

Bizarrely, he felt no company within his thoughts until he located the back of her neck with the same hand. He discovered shock and repulsion there, and he also found himself slapped across the cheek harshly. It was another discombobulating experience for him, as if she had somehow forced a vicious sense of being _scorned_ into the palm of her hand as she whipped it across his face.

Perhaps he was too absolute and abrupt in his request that she undressed or perhaps imagining her getting naked was the wrong way to go about it, he realized too late. He hadn't even been given the chance to produce another thought to explain the request.

He just couldn't get a single moment of peace and comfort, could he? They could have been at the gates of Coreltia by morning if they'd kept moving but, no, it had to storm on them, and the downpour had to create all-new problems for him. A cruel thought entered Vulmon's mind but he knew that it was entirely of his own inner monologue because he was not touching the woman at that moment. _I shouldn't even be alive right now, let alone dealing with this._

This time, Vulmon shoved the tunic into her shoulder and tried again, in a rather rushed manner, to get his point across.

"This is DRIER! Will you please get out of your soaked clothes and put this on before you freeze to death!" He shouted hurriedly, trying to tell her quickly both with his words and a hand pushed at her face so he could back off before he was slapped with another round of scolding.

It apparently worked. The evidence was the sound of sloppy wet dressings slapping across the table and, once she was done and presumably wearing his torn and blood-stained tunic, he received a rueful apology. It was all guilty emotion, no imagery or structure to it, so it put a chill up Vulmon's spine when her clammy little hand pressed into his shoulder. She retreated, thankfully, aware of his discomfort. Another chill followed the first. Vulmon found it disturbing that he _knew_ she knew he wasn't entirely okay with feeling someone else's emotions in this way. Empathy is one thing, _this_ felt entirely unnatural.

Vulmon felt around behind him until he found the backrest of that chair and hoped that it wouldn't be too rotten to support his weight as he dropped into it. There he let his face fall into his hands. He was exhausted, beyond sore, miserable, and he still felt as though his life was soon to be over even though his suicidal mission to destroy The Dominion's weapon of annihilation had failed and was nearly a full day behind him.

The woman was rummaging around somewhere in the dark. Vulmon didn't have the energy in him to stop her so he let it happen. He heard the snapping of dry cloth and dust irritated his nose into a fit of sneezing. Dewy feet came to him then, a hand clumsily finding the side of his head first and then resting on his shoulder. She had found a blanket or something like one, and she had shaken the spiders from it. It was _something_ to fight the cold, she gently urged. 

Dewy-feet's discovery got him out of that rotten seat so that he could examine the cloth himself. It was old, fragile with age, and stunk with dust and mildew, but she was right. It was better than nothing. It was probably a plaster worker's drop cloth rather than the blanket Dewy thought it was, it was too big not to be. He could wrap her in one end and himself in the other with a few more feet to spare. Arranging a fold of the cloth between them so that they could not touch one another was easy with the excess of it. 

So, there they sat, bundled on the floor in an unlit shack, just waiting out the storm. The thunder had quit, thank Vulkrid, but the rain persisted in sheets of fat droplets drumming on the rotten roof.

Vulmon and Dewy-foot hardly moved in their attached but separate cocoons of old cloth, so, Vulmon came close several times to closing his eyes and simply not opening them again. He was tired of course and with nothing to do but wait, he was having a hard time staying awake and vigilant. There was a wall at his back and some big blocky wooden piece of furniture at his right, so it was all too easy to lean into the corner they created and laze while the sound of rain lulled him.

The only thing keeping him awake was knowing that Dominion soldiers couldn't be that far behind them, and the closeness of the woman at his side. He could feel her body heat against his bruised ribs and in between his worries, he couldn't stop thinking about her bizarre gifts and unfortunate peculiarities. He wished that they shared a language so that she could answer some questions for him, but that was impossible. She spoke no known dialect, and the expression of simple concepts was the limit of his ability to communicate to her in the only way she knew. 

He wasn't sure how to ask about the strange, raised patterns all over her skin. They looked like scars, but the longer he'd known her the less he thought that was the case. Now that she was clean, they shine in the sunlight like iridescent snake scales and color speckled opals. On her cheeks were lines of the scar-like ridges that followed the shape of her eye socket, growing thicker but shorter the further they descended downward toward her jaw until they formed rounded triangles. Similar patterns traced her nose, lip, and brows in the same directions that hair would grow on furred beings, flowing away from the face. He wondered what these features or scars were for, if they had anything to do with the deadly powers locked within her, and if she really was human as he first suspected due to her ears. 

The cutely rounded ears of humans were not found in any other peoples. Even the dwarves had slightly pointed ears and although the half-giants of Shomal’s High Climbs would have rounded ears too, it was their tradition to crop them nearly completely to keep from incurring frostbite. Half giants have patterning on their skin, or so Vulmon had heard, but that seemed to be a matter of pigmentation and Dewy-feet was certainly no half-giant. 

There was a movement against Vulmon's side, Wet-feet beginning to squirm and rousing him from a state very near to dreaming about the questions he couldn't possibly ask. Her cold fingers found the naked flesh of his neck and he was flooded with frustrated confusion.

Vulmon groaned with discomfort and, like Wet-feet, he wiggled where he sat with the feeling. The image of a wizened old male face appeared and faded from his mind followed by the memory of himself telling her his name while they had tended his wounds earlier that morning. Again, he felt both his companion's confusion and his own as her bizarrely constructed question repeated. He didn't know who that old man was, and the picture wasn't clear or consistent. It was simply a generic old man and then the sound of his own name again and again until finally, he thought he understood.

" _Why does your name mean grandfather?_ "

Vulmon chewed on the end of his tongue while he tried to figure out how to explain to her that his name didn't mean grandfather, he was named _after_ his grandfather. Whatever he was doing in his thoughts to figure out how to explain in the first place seemed to be doing just that for Dewey-Feet. 

Another hand joined the first to touch him, this time at either side of his jaw. Vulmon could sense her echoing back the images of his own grandfather as he thought of him. He could recall himself running through the valleys of home, calling for Grandfather Vulmon when he was a boy.

When he was young, both of his parents were often involved in the campaigns to protect their people from the exploitation of the Dominion. Vulmon's mother and father were warriors and his grandfather was a farmer who often looked after him while his parents were away. 

Vulmon had wonderfully fond memories of this relative who passed away in his sleep many years ago doing precisely what he loved to do, peacefully napping in his favorite chair on his front porch as he watched over his gardens. It made sense that she had erroneously correlated the feelings he associated with his name and the name itself. The true meaning of the name Vulmon was derived from the word for the transition from winter to spring in the Ruxheim mountains and how nature stubbornly comes back to life every year. 

Wet-Feet mewed urgently, impressing upon Vulmon that she wanted to hear him speak so that she could drink in the sound of the word for grandfather. He told her the word in Orcish, for it was his mother tongue and the language he had the best grasp on. It was a relatively easy exchange of information, it flowed naturally and Vulmon thought that maybe if one could suffer through the initial shock of being touched by Dewey, it stops feeling so terrible to communicate this way after a few minutes. It was still tiring and began to frustrate them after a short time so she broke off their, so far, most casual discussion.

They resumed their silent wait. Vulmon drifted in and out of fragile dreams that were easily dispelled by the slightest fidget of the woman or creaks of the shack as wind pummeled it. He didn’t mean to sleep, he wanted to keep listening in case the Dominion trackers managed to catch up with them, but Dewy-Feet made her opinion known with a finger hooking around one of his own. 

“ _You’re tired, you need rest,_ ” She insisted by echoing back what she felt when she touched him, reminding him of every bruise, welt, and wound along with everything that had happened in that single day.

Fine, it was hard to argue with her anyway, so he shifted himself and forced her to scoot across the floor as well so that he could maneuver her between the wall and his body as he laid himself on his least bruised side. The idea of the girl getting up and wandering off haunted his thoughts so, he left an arm over her so he’d wake if she tried to move. He couldn’t let her be found by the elves, not after the carnage he’d seen. There they slept, albeit fitfully and chased by foul dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND just in case anyone wants to know about the ridiculous distraction that caused this chapter to take so long to complete… I saw a youtube video of how to make medieval townhouses for your D&D campaigns and thought I could bang one out in a single day and I was wrong. This took more than a week and I hope my players love it because I won’t be doing it again.


	8. Bow For A Boat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/21/2021 UPDATE: I've finished the draft for Chapter Nine, titled "Shadow Of The First Dominion" however I won't be able to clean it up and post it tonight because I've overworked my neck by staring at my phone and reading news during the Presidential Inauguration. I'll likely be able to start working on getting the chapter to readable shape this weekend, so stay tuned!
> 
> 1/24/2021 UPDATE: My neck issues last week and this weekend were a little worse than I thought. It seems more like an inflammatory flare-up. I wasn't as stiff yesterday but very sore, today was better but my neck and upper body still quickly begin to tense and lock up if I'm seated and working too long. Still editing chapter nine here and there with breaks, so it's still coming, just not 100% certain what day next week it'll drop.
> 
> 1/26/2021 UPDATE: Neck is probably 75% back to normal. Working on The chapter more seriously. I made some good additions, and also made some cuts to benefit the flow of the read. I'm now aiming for Friday to post the chapter.
> 
> 1/27/2021 UPDATE: I am now optimistically aiming to post the new chapter this evening or early tomorrow morning.
> 
> 1/28//2021 UPDATE: I've completed the first wave of editing, I'm now reading through to catch as many errors as I can and to be sure the continuity is strong and then... I suppose I can just post up chapter nine. WOO!

-Dew-On-Heels-

Dew-On-Heels expected the warrior to succumb to sleep, maybe lie down but only if he wanted to, because that was all she had asked him to do. She hadn’t considered herself in that equation. He grabbed her at the waist with only the barrier of the dirty old cloth they used as a blanket between her flesh and his rough hands, then he lifted her easily from where she sat, moving the lot of her across his lap and to his other side as he shifted himself around. With her breath caught in her throat, she couldn’t even squeak out a bleat of protest but the indignity was fortunately brief. Their shared covers had to be readjusted, and he turned away once to pull something down off the table nearby. It clattered to the floor loudly and she could hear him mutter irritably as he fiddled with whatever it was. When he turned back and settled on his side, she tried to sit up again but was weighted down with a massive arm slung around her waist, effectively pinning her arm to her side. 

Dew-On-Heels spotted something glittering in faint flickers of final flashes of storm light. The orc warrior was gripping the handle of the axe in the hand attached to the arm wrapped around her. That alarmed her for several minutes as she lay there, afraid to move or shift wrong with this sharpened hunk of steel so close to her body. There was a distant fear that she might move and startle him as he started to fall asleep and he’d swing the blade down onto her. Another thought, even further removed from her perceived reality but still undeniably present in her mind, she considered that his act of holding a blade as he slept might have been a threat meant to keep her from trying to escape him, as if she had anywhere to go.

As minutes passed, she wondered if he held that weapon because he was afraid of what might find them while they slept, and eventually she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and try to sleep too. After a while, the blade didn't bother her much. She was bewildered by how protected she managed to feel under the circumstances. He was a practical stranger holding a blade as he slept, and there she was, tucked between the shield of his body and the wall. 

Dew-on-heels never once in her life suspected that the heavy arm of a strange man from one of the Warring Factions would help her to feel safe, but he did. Also, her wandering recollections of the day reminded her that despite being an enormous man with cruel eyes and more anger within him than he knew what to do with, he had tried to be kind that day. She was still unsure of him and couldn’t fathom a reason for why he decided to keep helping her after they escaped a watery death, but Dew-On-Heels thought she wouldn't feel so secure if he hadn't fitted himself closely around her curled form. His body was big and leaden as he drifted toward sleep and relaxed against her back but he was also warm and the motions of his breathing were somehow comforting.

Dew-On-Heels was reminded of how much she had craved closeness to other people during her captivity. She was tempted to try holding his fingers as they lied on the floor together, but where that would have been a comfort if he were one of her own people, it would be disorienting for him and frustrating for both of them.

-

Dew on heels woke from broken periods of sleep plagued by nightmares that involved being chased. Sometimes it was a bear following in lumbering steps as he licked his chops and ground his teeth menacingly, other times the predators hounding her were soldiers in elven armor who wore leather mits over their hands. As she recovered from her ugly dreams, she was still wary of moving until dawn's gentle glow lit the interior of the shack enough that she could see the axe. The orc had lost his grip on the weapon and the deadly object had been pushed aside in the night.

When the morning’s light doubled its strength and formed shimmering rays through the window, Dew-On-Heels found that she could no longer keep herself still enough to pretend to sleep. She untangled herself from the cloth wound around her body and wiggled out from under her companion's arm. Her hip and shoulder ached from the hard wooden floor.

The orc warrior, _Vulmon,_ slept like a boulder. He was so limp that Dew-On-Heels could lift his arm at the wrist, using their shared blanket to keep from unintentionally invading his dreams, and it would drop with a thud when she let it go. He didn't even stir, so he must have truly needed the sleep. Just to be sure, she checked that he was still breathing and had not died from his injuries overnight. In and out went warm breath as she let her hand hover by his nose, he was merely exhausted. The poor man had run himself into the ground. 

Dew-On-Heels decided to leave him there to rest. She stood and stepped carefully over his legs so that she could examine the slip and kirtle she was meant to wear. They were still damp as was everything else, so she put on her shoes and groggily set herself to the task of taking all of the clothing outside. She gathered everything as quietly as she could so that Vulmon would not wake. She had to make two trips, for his leather armor was too heavy for her to carry all at once. Everything needed a good wringing out and time spent in the breeze to dry.

Vulmon had it wrong about Dew-On-Heels's tolerance to the cold, at least she thought so. His stained and tattered tunic was not much more than a thin veil to shield his eyes from her nudity and it did almost nothing to fend off the cool air of the morning but she wasn't going to _die_ of cold as he thought she would the night before. He was sweet, although wrong about her fragility. She was uncomfortable to be certain and she wished she had her winter cloak but that did not deter her from hanging up the clothes and doing what was right, even if she found it tiring and needed frequent breaks. Why was she so tired?

She briefly considered the wood stove in the far corner of the shack but was leery of the fire flue. After a little thought, she expected that it would be full of bird nests after so long without a flame stoked within it and she was no flue cleaner, so it was useless. She had no choice but to build a small fire outside and get to work drying out both her own and her rescuer's garments.

It wasn't so complicated a task since all of the tools and amenities were right there within reach if one was creative. There was plenty of cord for fishing inside, the rubbish lying all around looked good to burn, and that would do just fine to build a campfire and accompanying line for drying their clothes speedily. The only snag in her plan was that the warrior’s hard outer layer would need to be draped over the wooden hitching post in front of the shack. These pieces of his armor were so dense that any one of them would snap the line or cause it to sag to the ground.

She frequently tested the sleeves and thicker seams of her garments to see how they were drying. She was eager to put them back on because the tunic borrowed from Vulmon fit like a nightgown for someone twice her size and the collar was too wide not to slip off her shoulders. She would have to wait to take off the tunic. Her things still left a shining slick on her palms every time she touched them.

All she could do was be bored but keep her ears open in case anyone approached. No one did. Dew-On-Heels was left alone with her thoughts for quite some time, among those thoughts was the regret that she’d misunderstood her companion’s name. Mouth speakers name each other with sounds and two people could share the same sound for a name.

Although it made no sense given how young he looked, she had truly thought his name was Grandfather, but that wasn't so. She considered this name, the way it sounded when he’d said it, and she tried to work her mouth around the sound. 

"Uul... Ma. Va. Mm. Ahn?" 

It was no use. The curse of her people was that words of the voice and those written on parchment were beyond their ability. Their tongues and hands were condemned to producing all the bits and pieces which make up a language backward, out of order, or warped beyond any recognition. 

In their creation stories, a terrible overlord from a species who were no more had long ago scorned her people for plotting rebellion. That overlord had crafted a hex that rendered them unable to share their plots and ideas by snipping in twain the unseen threads that connect the mind to the mouth and fingers, or so the old tales say. It was that overlord's brother, or in some versions of the story, it was a son, who counter-casted a new spell to give them back the ability to speak to one another. The first curse could not be undone, so a novel solution had to be found. 

Dew-On-Heels caressed the ridges of the Sharing Patterns on her forearm with an idle hand as she recalled the stories of her people. Every generation carried the Sharing Patterns all over their bodies ever since the casting of these ancient spells. 

Dew had never tried to speak with her voice before because she never had to and had not known any words for voices to begin with. The faint hope that the curses were only a myth rapidly waned as she wrestled with the sound of Vulmon’s name again and accidentally bit the end of her tongue in the attempt.

Dew-On-Heels was about to lick the back of her hand to be sure her front teeth hadn’t drawn blood when the sound of a thud and a crash inside the shack interrupted her. Out through the open door, Vulmon stumbled with eyes that were furious but groggy, and his right hand was wrapped tightly around that axe of his. He looked like he was ready for a fight. 

Startled by the abruptness of his waking and emergence, Dew-On-Heels had forgotten to put away her tongue. Vulmon shook his head a bit and his brows pinched together in the middle, crinkling his forehead as he looked at her. She realized then that the sound of her failed efforts to gain the gift of gab must have found his ears like cries for help. She shut her tongue behind her teeth and tried to wave reassuringly at him without making eye contact. She felt hot in the face after being caught practicing an exercise in silliness. Her embarrassment waned and Vulmon sat himself upon a stump close enough to the fire to feel its heat but not be burned.

It was a new day and with it came a completely new feeling despite the pair facing precisely the same situation as the morning before. They were sitting around a fire at a place they had no intention of making camp but the margin at which trust had grown was significant. It was still awkward, though.

Dew-On-Heels marveled at the contrast between what she had thought of Vulmon yesterday versus this morning. Yesterday he had been severe and intimidating, today he was much the same but more than anything else he was just a tired man, twiddling his thumbs in his lap a bit, and not making direct eye contact.

She similarly avoided looking directly at Vulmon and toyed with the thin gold bands around her wrists. She knew they weren't coming off any time soon, but she slid the one on her right arm toward her hand to feel it against the heel of her palm where it could go no further. She also began to examine the markings etched into them, wondering what those squiggling lines meant.

Vulmon meanwhile scratched his arm lazily around the edges of the bandaging with his middle finger as he watched the fire. Likely to occupy himself from the awkwardness, he leaned backward dramatically to reach and tested the wetness of his leathers between his fingers from where they hung on the hitching post. Dew-On-Heels caught herself staring at the flex of his core muscles while he did that.

Dew-On-Heels felt somehow both under and overstimulated by doing nothing but sitting there next to this man she hardly knew and waiting for water to evaporate, so she got up from her seat to pull her slip off the line. She wanted to busy herself by holding it closer to the fire so that she could get into her own clothes sooner. She couldn't imagine that Vulmon was comfortable like that either, in just his braies, slacks, and nothing else but his boots. She was very nearly tempted to ask why the cold didn't seem to bother him at all, or maybe it did and he was too proud to outwardly reveal that. 

Dew-On-Heels heard him get up and follow after her, so she turned her head to see what was the matter but only saw the broadness of his naked chest as he stood so close. She froze when he pulled down the collar of the borrowed tunic at the back. She very nearly readied herself to slap him again for toying with what little that covered her body but his unknowable chatter stopped her, for it sounded pitying, not amorous. She felt the blunt tip of his claw carefully circle one of the places that hurt.

It was the skin over the protrusion of her right shoulder blade that had been worn raw within the minuscule prison she'd barely survived. It was now beginning to form a thick scab. Instinctively she tried to reach around herself and under an arm to protect it from his touch with her hand. A moment later she looked away and pulled the collar of the tunic back up toward the nape of her neck to conceal it from him. It felt ugly under her fingers, so she was quite certain that it looked ugly, too, along with all of its oozing and scabby sisters.

When she looked back he was holding out an opened hand. What a change of demeanor, _him_ trying to reach out and speak with her willingly and without any immediate threat of catastrophe to worry his mind. She waved a hand with agitated refusal, she didn’t want to see the sores on her body in his memory. He lifted both hands now and backed off a step, accepting that rejection easily.

When their clothes were dry, they both dressed with their backs toward one another, and soon Vulmon beckoned her to move with a tilt of his head and his oh-so-important hand gestures.

The first thing they did was smother out the fire, next, they raided the fisherman's shack. What was found inside wasn’t all that useful, there were no great revelations to be found within the space, only wood carvings, mediocre taxidermy, miscellaneous tools for crafting and woodwork, angling gear, and other things Dew-On-Heels couldn’t identify. More than anything, what they seemed to have come upon was a hobbyist’s long-forgotten hideaway. Vulmon found arrows and a fletching jig, but the arrows were brittle from dry-rot and snapped at the slightest bend between his fingers.

Dew-On-Heels found a sizable leather bag and poured out its contents. Empty and broken bottles. They stunk of brandy. It seemed that the hobbyist had been a drinker. She had no use for any of that refuse, but the bag could be good. She pressed her hand down into the bottom to see if it would hold up under stress and examined how dry it was. It could have benefited from oiling, but it seemed that it would hold if she decided to use it. She adjusted the buckled strap and tried it on. Almost as soon as she had the empty bag settled against her hip, Vulmon was pulling it open and stuffing the folded cloth they’d used as a blanket the night before inside it. It was a good idea. They might need it again.

Dew-On-Heels also took spools of the fishing line as Vulmon continued to turn the shack upside-down looking for anything useful. In the end, the only other object Vulmon took was an angling rod that could collapse into three pieces and fit into Dew’s bag as well. They left the shack shortly thereafter, and Vulmon closed the door on the way out, which Dew-On-Heels found odd but chalked it up to superstition as they moved on.

With escape and a day’s travel on foot behind them, she was beginning to wonder where they were headed. Vulmon’s head had sometimes given her brief flashes of a place wherever his urge to keep walking had made itself known. Somewhere wet where everything was built on stilts, and a partial face was sometimes mingled into the imagery but she never saw enough to know what this person looked like. All she could guess was that they were going to a specific place to meet a specific person who happened to have a tattoo on their left jaw. Beyond that, she had no clue where they were going or why. She considered trying to ask but wasn’t sure if he’d be able to answer her very well. It had been hard the night before when she asked about his name. 

As they began to walk, Dew-On-Heels found that her legs were very sore, maybe from all the excitement yesterday. It was another angering frustration, just something _else_ she’d lost because of what the elves had done to her. She used to walk all over the grassy hills and knew every forest meadow of home and would chase the wind with the family goats. Now? She could look behind her and still see the outline of the little shack through the trees if she squinted, yet already all she wanted to do was sit. She was falling behind as the orc stalked on, stubborn and seemingly unhindered by his numerous aches and pains. As he began to become obscured by the dense forest, she found herself growing panicky. What if they became separated? Why did he not even bother to try matching her pace?

“Mhgh! Bah! Ahn!” She called out desperately.

He didn’t turn back for her but she could hear that he had stopped some ways ahead. Dew-On-Heels fought the underbrush to reach him and felt great relief when she could see him again. When she finally saw his face she found piteous disappointment in his expression and felt almost shameful. She couldn't imagine that he was accustomed to companions who ached so badly after only a day of traveling that they can't keep up with so much as a casual meander. Dew-On-Heels broke off eye contact and looked at the ground instead as she cautiously offered a hand with the palm facing upward for him to take if he had anything to say. He didn't.

Dew-On-Heels was simply picked up under the legs to be settled in his arms and carried like a child. All that escaped her was a squeal as his actions had taken her off guard, and then silence as she tried to prevent herself from inadvertently touching his skin. With her legs situated around his waist and his right forearm supporting her under her bottom, her only option was hooking her fingers into the edges of his cuirass to cling to his upper body and rest her chin on a leather-clad shoulder. She had to be careful not to let her cheek brush against his neck. She felt small, incapable, and a bit like luggage. There was nothing to do at this point but put aside ego and bear it with as much grace as she could muster.

The motions of his walking were lulling and drove her very near to an uncomfortable nap against his chest, but the occasional scratching of thin branches with newly budding leaves as they moved kept her from falling asleep. This rendered much of the day for her a blur of half wakefulness. It had been morning when he scooped her up, but the sun had rolled across the sky into the evening by the time he placed her down on wobbly legs to stand on her own.

They were standing on a road and some distance away she could hear other people chattering and gibbering away. Mingled into the unfamiliar auditory stimuli of people talking, she could also hear a hammer against wood and people working with hand saws.

She looked up into Vulmon's eyes as he dropped his hands on her shoulders. With a sigh and eyes pinched shut he offered his hand to speak to her. When she took it she found the usual frustration woven through ever present worry within him, but also confusion about her name. He seemed to have it wrong, believing that her name meant wetness of the feet.

Dew-On-Heels closed her eyes and shook her head to focus on impressing upon him that Wet-Feet was _not_ what her name meant. He began his mouth speak as he argued to explain his line of reasoning. He thought that her name would not make sense to others who speak with the voice.

Dew-On-Heels shook her head and gripped his hand tighter in both of her own as she tried to tell him that her name didn't mean wetness of the feet. Her name was a _feeling,_ the very sensation of walking on grasses that are wet with morning dew. All of her people were named after things that could be felt with the senses. The feeling of rain falling on skin, the way wild strawberry seeds feel when you press them against the roof of your mouth, the taste of honeysuckle, the roughness of tree bark, the coolness of stone, the warmth of sunlight, these were only a few of the feelings that their people had crafted names from. Her mother's name was Grass-Against-Legs for the feeling of grasses blowing against your legs in the wind and her father's name was Taste-Of-Mint for the way mint leaves cool your breath.

-Vulmon-

"I can't call you Dewy-Wet-Feet around those people. It's too odd a name and people will ask questions. I need you to understand that questions are dangerous for you. The more people know the more they can tell Dominion soldiers."

Vulmon could tell that she was frustrated with him, maybe even a bit angry that he couldn't comprehend her name correctly. The best he could do was perceive the fact that her name was somehow linked to walking on wet grass. That just wouldn't do, not with these men. 

They needed a boat to cross over into Yolrise, and these boat herders were chatty folk who liked to ask questions and even lampoon you if you had anything out of sort about you.

He needed to be able to call her something that wouldn't raise questions, and fashioning a common name for her was just the half of their problems. She generally looked _different_ as a whole. As much as it went against his sense of ideals, he also needed to ask her to hide her face.

She continued to be frustrated and insisted that he used her real name, but Vulmon wasn't sure that he could articulate it correctly or if it was even possible to do so verbally. Carefully he tried again to convince her of this and, slowly, she began to listen to what he had to say.

"Look, Dewy-Feet, I will try to find something that fits you and the way your name... Feels? But it's very hard to explain how walking on wet grass feels then try to pass it off as a name. Sanene is a name that means the morning after a night rain, could that work?"

She shook her head at first as if she were trying to say no, but her thoughts seemed to be veering in the other direction toward acceptance. She closed her eyes and bit her lip but finally nodded as the sensation of agreement flowed up his arm. He could tell that she didn't quite understand, but she was trying, and he would try too.

He didn't let her hand go, for they had other things to discuss like, for example, cutting a length from the spare cloth that they had to make her some sort of veil that would cover her face more completely. He felt awful for asking this of her, but she presented to him a thoughtful comparison of his skin versus her own and agreed that her face would draw too much attention. Now she was getting it.

While they were alone on the road, they shrouded her in a long cut of the old drop cloth and Vulmon instructed her to stay close to him at all times. He tried to make it clear that he didn't fully trust these men, and although they were made up of many heritages and from every corner of the Six Realms, the boat builders sell their wares and their words to the highest bidder. To be brief, if you were wanted by the Dominion then your safety with these men only goes as far as the depth of your coin purse. Vulmon wanted to get what they needed and go as quickly as possible so as to limit how much the boatmen could glean about them visually.

As they made their way up the road, Vulmon kept his left arm wrapped around the girl’s back and gripped her shoulder loosely so that if the need arose, she could hide her face against his side. They needed to be passable as husband and wife because this would rouse the least suspicion.

When he had convinced her that they needed to do some acting and pretend to be married, she seemed to think that was funny. Vulmon _thought_ she might have tried to make a joke by imagining what his parents would look like, reminding him of what he looked like, next what she looked like, and then she imagined four sheep, three white and one black. At the time he wasn't quite sure how he was supposed to respond to that, he certainly didn't understand it or find it funny but on the walk, he wondered if she'd meant that she certainly couldn't pass as his sister. If she had been able to speak rather than pass along a convoluted string of thoughts, it might have come across as a nugget of dry humor. He had much to learn about the way she communicated. It was all images and references that are supposed to mean something to one of her own people but was just confusing and arbitrary to him.

At the end of the road, there was a gradual slope, man-made with mounds of sand piled into the bank of a placid river so that the decline into the waters was smooth and ideal for hauling a boat clear of the high water line. Dugouts burned hollow from thick hardwoods lined the bank and the men around them worked on both new and old boats.

The pair were greeted by a man wearing only a pair of light gray knee-length slacks held up by a braided cord tied around his hips. He was a tall spindly thing with eyes just slightly too large not to be unnerving. A half-elf clearly, as if the pointed ears didn't already give that away. With his hand, he swept from his eyes a mop of blond hair that was just a shade too pale to appear natural and smiled as he greeted them.

"Oi! You here to trade or travel?"

"On our way to visit family on the missus' side," Vulmon lied casually, "Need a boat. The way there is through the Water Forest."

"Aw-right, we can ferry ya on a dugger for six leck."

"I'd rather we made our own way there alone,"

"I can't just give out one of my boats, that's a month o' carving right there. Twenty leck. An' that don't include the paddle!" He haggled like a proper grifter. These boats weren’t worth that much gold new, maybe as much copper, but not gold.

"We were robbed on the road on the way here, I'm short of coin but I can trade to sweeten the deal," it was another lie. 

"Oh?" the half elf's tone dropped into a purr of newly ignited interest, then his eyes fell upon the woman at a Vulmon's side.

The orc instinctively pulled the woman closer against him and let his teeth show in a silent snarl. Perhaps sensing the nature of the boatman's leer, Sanene turned into her companion and pressed her face into his chest as if to hide. The half-elf wisely put his gaze elsewhere.

"Eh, well, how about whatever leck you got and that bow? I'll take that in exchange for one of the older boats."

Vulmon snorted, he didn't want to give up the bow, which he'd built himself, but he didn't see much choice. He untied his bow and the coiled string from himself to brandish it in his hands one last time. He'd had it for a few years and in the handgrip, a tiny rhino herd grazing over a hilly landscape had been carved.

"An old leaky boat? Is that really the best you can do?" Vulmon asked tersely, absolutely meaning to intimidate the man, but the boatman was unaffected.

"I'll throw in an extra paddle for the lady for the arrows too,"

"Fine, but _not_ the quiver,"

"Fair fair, a deal then,"

It hurt to do it but Vulmon handed the bow over and next began to feign digging in his pockets for all the coins he had on his person. He wasn't giving this jerk everything, he still needed to buy supplies in Coreltia. A total amount of eight leck in loose copper and silver coins was all the lecherous eyed bastard got out of the orc, and the half-elf scoffed bitterly, but a deal was a deal.

Vulmon patted in the back of the woman's hand hoping such a subtle gesture would impart to her the comfort of knowing that they had gotten what they needed in order to continue their journey. Thankfully, no one had asked for their names.

One of the other Boatman, a full-blooded human this time, led them to one of the small dugouts and did little more than undo the coiled rope from the around the neck of a carved otter’s head on the front end. The half-elf came a moment later to hand the orc two paddles. Inside the dugout, he found accommodations made for seating, just three planks of hewn wood wedged inside to both hold the vessel’s shape and plant asses.

Just once, Vulmon looked back as he settled the girl in the boat to gaze upon his favorite bow one last time. The elf who bought was struggling to get it strung. It was a strong bow made for a strong man. It served the boatman right to struggle, he shouldn't have looked at Dewy-Feet that way.

Vulmon pushed the boat out into the water and hopped in carefully. The pair were soon moving downriver into ever narrower flows of brackish waters framed in by the entangled roots of mangroves. The Water Forest was vast, a maze, but Vulmon knew these flooded passages well. Vulmon's father was from Coreltia, so he'd drilled his son to memorize the forest and narrow channels by rote. When Vulmon was a teenager, the father and son duo had traversed the Water Forest many times going to and from their residence in Yolrise and the Strongholds of the South. Vulmon worried little about getting lost.

The girl, though, she peered around with a grave look about her face and had initially protested being placed in the boat at all. She was quite concerned about the risk of drowning, and as they both paddled, she paused to cup a hand over the back of his neck with her frightened questions flowing into him and making it hard to steer the dugout.

How come he wasn't afraid of the water? Why was he so comfortable in this flimsy boat with three inches of water sloshing in the bottom? She knew he couldn't swim and reminded him of that in between every thought.

He grumbled and turned his head to peer back at her with the corner of one eye.

"My father was a shipwright before the war, I know boats, this one won't tip,"

Vulmon hoped that would do to quell her fears just a little, but realized it probably wasn't enough. Too bad, their only hope was to arrive in Coreltia before they starved to death or were captured by Dominion soldiers. 

His answer only led to another question. If his father built boats then how come he didn’t know how to swim? He grumbled some more, he could feel her digging around in his head.

“I was raised in the mountains of Ruxheim when I was a small boy, I didn't come to Yolrise until I was sixteen or seventeen years old. All the water I'd ever been in before then was only knee-deep,” 

Truth be told, he _was_ a bit concerned about drowning but only because of the weight of the armor he wore. He could float but the limit of his swimming ability was to kick his legs and flail his arms until he found a solid object or a stronger swimmer to grab onto. It’s a stretch to call that swimming.

As they ventured deeper into the forest, the waters became clear and one could see down to the bottom where instead of brown silt there were tiny speckled dunes of pale sand and all manner of life creeping within it or swimming above it. Vulmon often caught her tentatively peeking over the edge of the dugout to watch the fishes and young rays as they passed them. Vulmon couldn't resist a little fun. As dusk began to darken the already shadowed forest, he reached back and offered a hand for her to take.

"The Water Forest is a nursery to little sharks, if you're lucky you might see them. Or the mum."

Somehow that excited as much as frightened her. Soon a game was made of trying to spot and point out sharks to him. Often she mistook other streamlined fish. She'd never seen sharks, and more than once searched his mind to ask him what they looked like. They didn't see any that evening before they had to find somewhere sheltered in the trees to tie off and wait until morning.

Vulmon sacrificed his comfort for what he thought would be the last time for the day to tell her that they were spending the night out there, then he tied off the dugout to the roots of an alcove of trees in a bend of the river. All that could be done was sit and wait out the night. For the first hour, it went about the same as Vulmon had expected it to, until the woman slumped forward against his back, having fallen asleep sitting up. She startled awake as her head hit his armored spine, then she shifted about and groaned.

Vulmon didn’t want her falling backward into the three inches of dirty water in the bottom of the boat next. The orc sighed and, awkwardly, he twisted himself around to reach back with a hand. He offered to pull her onto his lap to rest for the night wrapped in the cloth presently rolled up in her bag. She was hesitant at first but the idea of an opportunity to curl up and dry her feet was too much to pass up.

As she situated herself on his thighs and against his upper body, she grasped his hand with concern in her eyes as she pictured him asleep. This was her way of asking if he would be getting any rest. The answer was no. Vulmon didn't plan on sleeping that night. He would stay awake and keep watch. Night fell over the watery world of western Hecstien, and for those hours Vulmon’s had a cocoon of a woman in his lap looking very much like a pupating silkworm.

She didn't sleep well. Vulmon could sense her jerking awake to the occasional splashes or calls of nocturnal wildlife all around them, which of course goes on all night. Vulmon was tired, but their level of exposure and his own growing hunger served to keep him well awake.

He thought about her name, the feeling of walking on wet grass in the morning with bare feet. It was a feeling he knew, and it was such a universal experience that he could scarcely imagine anyone not once in their lives walking through or observing glassy beads clinging to soft green groundcover. When he thought about it, it truly was a pretty thing to name someone. Thinking about grass and shrub glittering with dew reminded him of his childhood home in the mountains. 

He tried to condense her name into three syllables or less, but any abbreviation of her true name would get her strange looks. If the situation were different, he'd probably introduce her to anyone they met as accurately as possible, no matter how long it took, in order to honor her true name. It was unfortunate and he knew it had upset her to be told that her name would draw unwanted attention, but he had to insist that they do everything in their power to make themselves unmemorable.

When they spoke in her way, he could call her by her true name, but he decided that he'd verbally continue to call her Sanene, perhaps with the added epithet of Dew Walker. Sanene Dew Walker, it was a proper orc name and he thought it suited her.

By the time dawn began to light the world again, Vulmon's eyes were consistently trying to droop closed every few seconds and his ass was entirely numb. He needed to be doing something or else he'd soon be fighting off a long and incredibly uncomfortable nap. Sanene awoke feeling rested but kept touching his face to see how he felt. Her thoughts came across as apologetic. 

They passed the waterskin between them a few times to drink as the world lit up enough for them to see and press on with their journey. 

Before they set off, Vulmon had to satisfy a curiosity that had nagged at him for days. He held a palm turned skyward, their sign for a question, and grunted to get her attention. With his free hand, he mimed the pattern of her raised markings with a finger turned towards his own face. He wanted to know what they were, if they were scars or something else, and he hoped that she would understand the somatic expression of the question better than the mess of it as it had manifested in his head.

She tilted her head, presented both her hands to him, but waved him off when he moved to take one. She was pointing with a finger to one of these raised scar-like markings as it decorated her palm in a somewhat swirled shape. He never really noticed that she had these things on the bottom of her hands too. Now she opened and closed a hand to beckon one of his own. The mental exchange was brief and all he could ascertain was that she was going to show him something. She isolated his index finger and physically instructed him to press the pad of his finger to the center of her palm where a larger gap between the markings was. When she let go of his finger and let it stand alone in the middle of her left palm, he felt nothing, no thoughts that were not his own. He couldn't hear her mind. Then, as she slid her hand toward herself and his finger touched those ridges, he felt her thoughts. 

_Ah_ , these features were the physical mechanism with which their minds were able to connect. They weren't scars, they were an organ like a tongue and served the same secondary purpose. If he weren’t touching one of these raised marks, they couldn’t exchange thoughts.

Sanene smiled at him as she sensed that he'd figured it out. He couldn't convince himself that she wasn't endearing and she smiled more. Vulmon quickly realized that she'd overheard his mind while he was admiring the kindness in her face when she grinned. He let go of her hands then and began untying their dugout from the mangroves to distract himself from the knowledge that this thought he wished had remained private was known.

Sanene didn't seem too affected, she merely peered carefully over the edge of the boat and observed little fish as if nothing had changed.


	9. Shadow of the First Dominion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/31/2021 UPDATE: I'm going to put together a side blog on for keeping interested readers better updated as this thing progresses. People who are enjoying the read deserve to get more reliable updates on when new chapters will drop, see any art or lore musings I might produce which won't make its way here for obvious reasons. I'll let you all know what happens with that. Thanks.
> 
> By the way, I'm also drafting chapter ten today.
> 
> 2/21/2021 UPDATE: just FYI I play Don't Starve Together pretty heavily and I've been procrastinating with that fairly often what with the Year Of The Beefalo event happening with it currently. Outside of that, it's been hard to tell if my slowness to produce chapters is just me being typically slow to work or if it's a symptom of adjusting to my partner's ever-changing work hours. The chapters came fast and hard when he was on first shift because I'd be home alone during my most productive hours (8:00AM - 4:00PM). Now, he's on third shift and that's a weird thing. I use a speech-to-text app to write because it's easier to work around my dysgraphia that way, so talking loudly and as clearly as I can to a device during the hours he's trying to sleep wouldn't work for obvious reasons no matter where I am in the apartment. I'm trying to adjust to make writing/dictation doable every night after he heads out at 10:00pm but... I can only seem to squeeze out 15-ish minutes a night because I'm kinda creatively dead after 2:00PM so... yeah. It's been hard to adjust to that set of hours in between networking for my own income. BUT don't worry TOO much, chapters are still coming and there are about 3,000 words drafted for chapter ten currently. It's happening but I need to be patient with myself.
> 
> Update, a blog for anyone following this story is up on Tumblr, I'll include the link with the next chapter. Any of my art pertaining to this will appear there as well as map overhauls, more in-depth updates regarding chapter progress, and the ask box will be open.

**-Galdrinas City, Torkel, Capital of The Empire-**

Elves are nocturnal beings. Their large and reflective eyes are too easily burned by the light of dawn raking over the land. To avoid discomfort and blindness, most elf citizens of Galdrinas slept from first light until dusk, leaving the market places to the human vendors and carrying out their own business in the hours of darkness.

Not all elves slept, a pageboy with a strip of golden spider silk wrapped over his eyes to combat the light sprinted from the courtyards where the human ranks of palace guards had coalesced to discuss happenings of concern and pass down orders. The elf pageboy had been woken from his bed in the servant-quarters and told to pass a message to Huyric, the Chamberlain to Emperor Talimus.

Through the third and fourth gate-houses and into the keep the boy ran until finally, he passed under the stone archway into the main hall. Now he could tear away the cloth protecting his eyes. He searched for Chamberlain Huyric, passing a laundress taking away a bag of night garments from the court to the wash-house. She pointed him the way to the war room where Huyric dutifully waited outside the door while the Emperor, accompanied by his personal guards, dealt with today’s scandal.

“Chamberlain Huyric, I have news from the grounds guards which they heard from General Onvyr’s messenger!”

Huyric was an old man, but miraculously un-wrinkled and showed no signs of time rumpling him past the appearance of a man in his forties despite seeing many more years than that. He stooped to hear what the boy had to tell him in a whisper. The child’s words sent a wave of chills across Huyric’s pale flesh. The Emperor’s fiancé had gone missing. No one had seen her in more than two days. Talimus would need to know, but he would not be happy about this. 

“Thank you, child. I want you to run to the temple and pray now. Go with the goddess and be safe.” Huyric told the boy. 

Huyric took a deep breath as the sound of the pageboy’s bare feet slapping the stone floors faded. He needed to gather his courage. The Emperor was already in a disgusting mood, shouting at anything that passed too close to him and berating the staff. He could hear him in that very instant, giving the servant Huyric had let into the room a few minutes beforehand a verbal throttling over the wine she’d come to deliver.

“This tastes like poison, give me that bottle… Aged thirteen years? Piss!” the voice of The Emperor roared from within the room.

Now was probably no worse a time to enter the war room and deliver the news. Talimus would be breathing fire today regardless. Upon pushing open the double doors and stepping inside Huyric saw the servant’s white hair and clothes stained red from the wine that had been thrown at her.

“You expect me to drink this? Tastes like the swill you peasant wretches gargle over your bland meals, give this sludge to the messenger griffins and bring me a proper drink!”

The servant, her name was Selino, hurried out of the room in tears and tall ears wobbling as she sprinted for the door. She nearly ran Huyric over on her way out. The poor girl. 

“Huyric, has Onvyr arrived?” Emperor Talimus had already seen his Chamberlain and had not given him a chance to speak before cracking orders, “bring him in at once! I want to hear what he has to say of Riticulo's blunder,"

General Riticulo, who was already lain prostrate on the floor, somehow managed to shrink further into his gleaming armor much like a frightened tortoise. For Emperor Talimus to summon General Onvyr, a son of the Black Order, was surely to sentence a man to death right here in the war room. Fate was on Riticulo's side, however. Onvyr was unavailable.

"Your Grace," The Chamberlain Huyric quavered, wringing his spidery hands as he fretted over how best to word his next utterance, "Onvyr's daughter, you're _betrothed,_ has gone missing. General Onvyr is with a search party as we speak, this is why the messenger was so late."

“What?” barked the emperor, nearly laughing incredulously.

“General Onvyr’s daughter, Idrilli, who you are engaged to, she’s missing.” it was best to keep the repetition concise and direct since he was already upset over other matters.

“Bones of The _fucking_ Ancestors!” Talimus exploded, kicking over a chair as Huyric took a calculated step backward and cautiously watched what his ruler’s hands were doing.

“Fire of The Depths! Rage of the Desolate Mountain! What in the fuck are any of you good for then!?” that was directed generally at the palace guards, as indicated by the direction in which Emperor Talimus threw his drinking goblet. The guard stationed by the door had to duck to avoid the thrown cup.

The curses and belligerent raging continued, but so long as Talimus did not begin to cast what destructive spells he was capable with, the occupants of the room were relatively safe. He hadn’t been made angry enough to literally spit fire since his boyhood but he was still young and unpredictable. Huyric was mentally preparing to cast a warding spell over himself to protect his skin and robes from a potential spray of flames if need be. Every figurine to represent hostile factions had fallen to the floor as the Emperor violently cleared the table. Huyric waited patiently as the tantrum burned itself out. 

Emperor Talimus had gone from pale like freshly fallen snow to pink as a rat pup in the face, hair a frizzed mop, and the wreath of golden holly that had ringed the crown of his head a moment before now hung from a straining few strands of his pearl hair. 

“... _HOW,_ ” He huffed, losing his breath in his rampage upon the inanimate objects within the room, “has everything managed to fall apart on me on the same day! And why the _hell_ is that wine taking so long!”

Huyric paused, wringing his hands again and taking a few guarded steps forward to speak. 

“What would you have me do? To alleviate you of some discomfort in your time of need?” 

This was an act, a job, and Huyric had to be kind and cordial even when his base instinct told him to leave an angry child to his own misery. Huyric valued the way his head was attached to his shoulders too much to do anything but to ask the Crowned Brat how he could be helped.

" _Bring. Onvyr_... and before you do that, accompany the palace guard to the guest villa to fetch the Stryag. I want to tell him myself that his abomination has been loosed upon Hecstien." Emperor Talimus glowered down at Riticulo as he spoke, as if the general had something to do with that particular crisis.

"Abomination? You don't mean... The Asset, do you?" Huyric asked, terror beginning to take on power in his soul. 

"Yes, the very one."

Huyric said no more and turned to leave but chanced a glance down at General Riticulo as he crossed the room once more toward the door. This was a final gaze upon a corpse that had the misfortune to still be capable of experiencing pain and suffering.

  
  


**-Vulmon-**

Faint mists hovered over the water, split by the roots of mangrove trees as they crept along to form tendrils resembling ghostly fingers. It seemed though the forest itself were reaching toward them as they paddled. The low hanging fog told Vulmon that the weather was going to change. Today might be warmer than yesterday and that was good. He was weary of the grip of winter lingering into the spring.

Sanene was still fascinated by the sights more so than by the work of paddling and that was fine. Vulmon didn't expect much out of the girl physically, anyway. She'd need more meat on her bones and to regain her strength before any expectation could be placed upon her.

The longer they traveled the denser the Water Forest became. This indicated their progress toward Coreltia, however, it also elevated Vulmon's anxiety. The Dominion used these waterways to move supplies and provisions to their encampments. An orc and a human on a simple dugout wouldn't raise much suspicion if they were unarmored and carrying nothing but paddles. Although the repulsion elves harbored toward orc kind was fierce, they'd be hard-pressed to find a reason to bring a ship to a full stop just to harass what would appear to be a single man and woman on a boat. There was a problem however, Sanene was extremely recognizable and Vulmon wasn’t about to take off his armor now and leave himself vulnerable. This was why Vulmon was thankful that he’d thought to save that drop cloth. Slinging the cloth over his shoulders and ushering Sanane to the front of the boat to sit on the bow-seat ahead of him both hid what he wore and put her in the perfect position. She could be pulled onto his lap quickly and tucked into the cloth to be safely hidden if necessary. 

Vulmon and Sanene had an easier time of understanding one another when he went about explaining his intentions before scooping her up to help her to the front of the boat. She also seemed to enjoy being able to lean carefully over the port side and run her fingers through the surface of the water. 

Vulmon was certain that the current would be sufficient to move them the rest of the way toward Coreltia without much more paddling. He wanted to concentrate on listening to the sounds of the forest around them. His hope was that they would not see anyone on the last legs of their trek, but if they did he wanted to hear them long before he saw them. The girl sat quietly ahead of him and watched the forest around them as he did. As far as he knew, she had understood that they were to be quietly listening for other travelers on the water.

They were incredibly lucky. Not a soul was seen up until the outer walls Coreltia came within sight. This too concerned Vulmon somewhat. If the Dominion weren't busy moving their supplies to feed their men, then what else had them too busy to bother?

When informed that they had nearly made it to their destination, Sanene set herself to work folding up and ringing out the wet edges of the drop cloth to stuff back into her bag. The last thing to be done was to adjust the veil around Sanene's face. Vulmon used the pins and ribbons that Tiffany had given him to secure Sanene's disguise in place. All that could be seen were brown eyes and a pale nose peeking out at the world. She might not have enough hair for the pins and ribbon anymore but these objects had found a use. His debt to Tiffany was growing. He knew he had to find a way to thank her one day, somehow.

Sanene squirmed in her seat nervously as the forest opened up into a vast bay on their right. To their left, the banks framing the city wall were lined by docks and those docks were choked with all manner of boats. Many of these vessels were enormous, meant for fishing and hauling cargo.

Vulmon's breath hitched in his chest and his teeth ground together as he spotted a Dominion Patrol vessel. Further down the line, he spied a ferryman's boat adorned in gold leaf encrusted reliefs carved into every dry surface to depict Torkel scenery on the flanks of the vessel. Elves were here, and he could only guess at why. Hopefully, it wasn’t an inquiry team searching for survivors of the battalion, and he prayed in hushed whispers to Vulkrid and Kezbal that they were not here to search for the terrible power they'd lost only three days ago.

Anxiously, Vulmon checked that Sanene's face was still adequately covered. She seemed to sense his unease and held out a hand but he had to refuse. This was not the time to send her into a panic.

Whether the elves were here for nefarious plots or not, Vulmon was sure that not much could be done by their ilk to reclaim Sanene. The docks were well controlled by City Guards. No one with half a brain would start a fight here without an army at their back. Thus far, Vulmon had only seen one ship which would have had combat-ready men onboard. The ferryman's boat was peculiar, to say the least. He wasn't sure what the presence of such a vessel meant but it couldn't be good. Vulmon needed to get her inside the city walls quickly. Dominion elves were not permitted within the city, so safety lied past this barrier.

These timber walls were fourteen feet high, crowned with wooden battlements for guardian archers to watch over travelers and fishermen conducting their business. The only way in was a narrow stone gate framed with barred murder-holes. 

What Vulmon had to do was tie off the boat and walk Sanene to the gate, but to find a place to tie off and pay the fee close to that entryway was near to the impossible. The closest available space left them with a two-hundred yard walk to survive unnoticed. Sure, if they happened upon a Dominion Soldier who would question them, the guards would handle the rest with but a single cry for help, but it could still be a disaster in any number of ways. Sanene's identity could be revealed and to accomplish that all a Dominion Soldier would need to do was snatch the veil off her head. If they happened to run into a survivor of the barge then Vulmon could be recognized which might initiate a brawl. His stomach turned at the quite plausible scenarios being concocted within his head.

" _Just move swiftly_ ," he muttered to himself as he maneuvered the boat into place.

He paid one of the Dock Master's men and received unexpected help from a fisherman to tie off and help the lady disembark. Sanene shied from the offered hand of the fisherman and for a moment Vulmon forgot why she would do that. He clambered out and helped her himself, shrugging off what the fisherman would perceive as shyness.

"She's a refugee," Vulmon lied simply, hoping the fishermen would be sympathetic enough not to be hurt over her refusal to take a polite hand for assistance.

"Aw, no matter, been shite for everyone lately, eh?" he said before returning to his work.

Vulmon didn't want their traversal of the dock to be slowed by Sanene's proclivity to rapidly become fatigued, so he scooped her into his arms and strode for the gate with as much haste as he could summon without falling into a jog.

He and his father had known much of the guard detail in the city, as the vast majority of them were either orcs or related to members of the Seafarers Guild. He figured he’d have no trouble gaining passage through the gate even with a strange woman in tow.

Sanene had looped her arms around Vulmon's neck and with her nose pressed to his cheek, she began to ask questions. Vulmon could only hide so much from her, she easily found within him the imagined figures of Dominion Soldiers on the dock as he worried about running into such men. She whimpered and hugged her arms tighter around him as she was carried.

"Hey, Vulmon! You're not dead!" 

These were the words Vulmon heard shouted at him before he actually saw the guards posted outside the entrance. And he recognized the voice immediately. _Vulkrid_ , he really wished Yadris had been more casual about greeting him. He’d known the man for years, Yadris, a merm who shared traits with sharks. Vulmon now trotted at a more expedient clip to reach the guarded gate before he could shout some more.

"Shush!" Vulmon forwent the jovial greeting he might have given the man had all been well, "I have an injured woman, I need to get her inside,"

This wasn't a lie, the sores on her back looked vile and had crusted over yellow and green with signs of infection. Korg’s husband, Faldren, would be able to mend their wounds easily. 

"Right, right but hey! Korg is shattered over you and your Pa- Er, where is yer Pa?"

Sanene’s mind was loud and concerned with the way Yadris appeared. Apparently, the serrated wedges of his many rows of teeth frightened her, and the way his bulbous eyes rolled in their unblinking fleshy sockets toward them, and the hazy greyness of the sclera on those eyes, and the other worldly electric blue of his thin iris, _and_ the jagged scars across his face where one of his siblings had bitten him a few years back in the frenzied confusion of a family meal. Vulmon didn’t have enough room in his head around the swelling bubble of her fright to come up with a sensitive answer to Yadris’ sincere question.

"He's dead, Yadris."

" _Oh,_ "

"Just let us in, I'm not exactly in one piece either," Vulmon growled to cover up the pain of his previous statement.

“Ah, ah! Hold on! Gate’s sealed up tighter than a crab’s cock! We had a bunch of big-eared night-feeders try their luck with some bad disguises yesterday, and some drow woman with a mighty set of _lungs_ on her this morning. My ears are still ringing, oof… Anyway, I’m sorry, Vulmon, we have to double-check everybody coming in or out.” Yadris explained and reached a webbed hand toward Sanene.

The woman hid her face against Vulmon’s neck, and he backed away a step himself. She _truly_ did not want this stranger to touch her, and the aversion to him threatened to spill over into Vulmon’s own perception of his experiences with Yadris. He didn’t have the time or privacy to reassure her that Yadris was harmless.

“You don’t trust me?” Vulmon barked.

“No! That’s not what I mean, just- You never know. An elf can manipulate people with their damned spells.” Yadris whined, “Vulmon, I’m just doing my _job_.”

Vulmon snarled again but gave up. He couldn’t make Yadris and Sanene happy at the same time.

“Fine but just... feel around on her ears through the coif, do _not_ pull it off her face.”

“...Why?” 

_Yadris, you infuriating pain in the ass._ It was, however, a valid question.

“Because I’ll thrash you if you yank it off. She’s afraid of you.” It was the truth, and it didn’t matter how Vulmon knew that.

Yadris finally met him in the middle, finding only the shapes of rounded human ears, and he called for the barred gate to be raised. Not without a glance behind them, just to be sure Dominion grunts were not watching, the pair entered the city.

Vulmon's relief was fairly immediate, as this was the city where he'd spent the last eleven years of his life. He knew these streets and he knew these people. It was vaguely upsetting to learn that word had made it here to Coreltia that the Battalion, the great Gathering of Orc Warriors, had fallen with no survivors. _Save for one,_ Vulmon's mind corrected itself as he remembered the battlefield strewn with ash, empty suits of armor, and scattered bones. From what Yadris had said, Korg had mourned him for however long he'd known of the Battalion's fate.

Sanene squirmed in his grip and probed him questioningly. Vulmon cursed and strained his neck to pull his face away from hers to break contact. He'd come too close to accidentally revealing what role she had unwittingly played in that heinous event.

Vulmon now put her down to walk on her own but offered an arm for her to take. She hooked her elbow firmly around his own. For the moment, he'd rather her grip his sleeve than be eavesdropping on his head. _We will just stroll at a leisurely pace_ , he decided, being careful to match her speed as he walked her toward the inn where he and his father had lived for the past decade. Again, he felt grief weighing on his heart for Dalrax.

Sanene never failed to provide a distraction from the heartbreak. She pulled on his arm a bit so that they could veer toward the edges of the catwalks and peer over the side as they walked. This city was built over marshland to create a trading hub between the holds of Hecstien and the merm metropolis beneath the waves to the west of Yolrise. Coreltia, and every settlement or township of Yolrise, was built up high to keep dry in spite of rising and falling waters. Sanene slid her hand down his forearm to hold onto the meatiness of his thumb knuckle and find confirmation that, yes, these catwalks were built all through the city to keep citizens dry. 

Vulmon was beginning to wonder if she’d ever seen anything beyond the borders of the village where she was born, and she seemed to answer him. She passed to him a fat ball of thoughts that consisted of nothing but images of steep hillsides he’d never seen himself but inexplicably found familiar. The landscape she showed him was dotted with thatch rooftops and the memory held the faint sound of ocean waves crashing somewhere not far away. This was what made sense to her, what was mundane, everything else was new.

Vulmon kept on leading her deeper into the city toward higher ground to Helga’s Inn, the place he called home. He began to preemptively picture Helga in his thoughts, trying to remember her fondly, lest Sanene became frightened by her appearance the same as she’d been with Yadris. Helga’s father had been a kind of minotaur being but with features like a stag rather than bovine beasts, and Helga very much resembled him. Helga had a habit of behaving maternally, so Vulmon was sure that she’d be kind to Sanene. 

Helga's inn, much like the outer wall, was built primarily from timber and looked somewhat like a cabin from the outside. Two empty stone planters framed the double doorway at the front entrance and Vulmon knew there to be a much longer planter in the back from which had once grown roses. The salty air and poor soil quality had rendered the Rose Garden sickly without the skilled care of whoever had owned the inn before Helga, so now all there was to look at through the back window was the thorny skeleton of the climbing bush.

Vulmon led Sanene up the front stoop, allowing her to take her time to ascend before pushing open the door to bring her inside. It was crowded with sailors in the main room, which was normal, but he strained to peer over heads and find who he was looking for.

"Vulmon!" Helga shouted before the man whose name she’d called had a chance to locate her within the establishment. She had dropped a tankard in her surprise and made such a show of moving around the counter that Vulmon thought she might just hop over instead. 

Helga's hands found either side of his face as if to confirm that he was who she thought he was, fretted over the bandaging wound around his arm that he’d bled through at some point, then she searched around Vulmon with her eyes. He knew right away who she was looking for.

"He didn't make it, he died a warrior's death, Vulkrid has him now," Gods, it still hurt Vulmon to hear himself say it, that his father had died. He wasn't truly ready to put it to words how Dalrax had perished in the act of protecting him, so he left that part unsaid for now. Helga deserved to know that, eventually, but he couldn’t say it yet.

Helga's face fell and her big soulful eyes welled with tears, but the droplets did not fall. She always knew what lifestyle they had chosen and what could happen. No doubt, she had spent years mentally preparing herself for this inevitability. With a shaky sigh, she turned to pick up the tankard she had dropped and waved a hand for him to follow.

"You look like you've been to hell and back, let me get you fed and caught up, Youngin."

Ah, _food_. Vulmon's gut gnashed and it felt as though his stomach had grown teeth and begun to chew on itself. You couldn't get him to pass up a meal now even if the skies were turning up in flames. With an arm curled around her back, Vulmon ushered Sanene toward the counter to take a stool and sit beside him.

Vulmon felt like he should be saying something, but nothing came into his mind that felt worthy of wasting energy to speak. All he wanted was to eat something and take advantage of being at the place he knew as a home to feel the despair that he'd been pushing back ever since the barge. Helga filled in the silence for him as she pushed a plate of bread crusts and goat cheese with a knife sticking in it at them.

"Korg was here last night. He gathered yours and your father's things to send back to Ruxheim."

"Did he pay our tab? Or-"

"Forget the tab! I'm just glad you're alive... one of you at least," she paused and shuddered like she might have been beating back a sob, "Who's this with you?"

"Her name is Sanene, I don't know much more than that," the look in Helga's eyes told Vulmon that she'd seen through his lie.

It figured that she would detect any deception from him. They'd known each other for years and she fancied herself as his second mother, so this time he told her a small truth. 

"If it weren't for her I'd be dead too."

If he hadn't found Sanene, then his self-assigned suicide mission would have played through until the painful end he'd chosen for himself. Helga then tried to introduce herself, giving her name and how she'd known Vulmon, but the girl only stared blankly at her with her owlish eyes.

"Er, sorry Helga, forgot to mention, she doesn't understand common,"

"Orcish?"

"Nah,"

"Northerner tongues then?"

"Nope, she doesn't speak any language I've ever heard of," it was the understatement of the century.

Helga hummed thoughtfully and glanced toward the girl with only her eyes flitting between the pair before her.

"Dare I ask how she saved you from the massacre?" Helga inquired tentatively, voice falling low so that other patrons could not hear them converse.

Before Vulmon could come up with an answer that might have satisfied Helga's curiosity, Sanene had pulled the concealing cloth down under her chin so she could take a bite out of bread crust with a sliced wad of cheese tucked into it. It was unavoidable but Vulmon still cringed as Helga gasped at the sight of Sanene 's face.

"Gods, those scars!" she cried.

"Shh, I'd like it if we didn't draw attention to it," Vulmon glanced around to make sure that no one had turned their heads to the sound of Helga's shock, although just because someone had the tact not to gawk didn't mean they weren't now eavesdropping.

"She was born with them, I think," he informed Helga in a whisper. "They're not scars, they're... Ugh! I don't know how to explain. You'd think I left my brain on the battlefield, anyway."

A moment of stunned silence took hold between them until Vulmon and Helga realized that they were both doing nothing but watching the girl eat bread until she began to anxiously look at the both of them, likely trying to discern what was the matter with them. Helga was the first to break the morbid trance and turn away to get them each a pint of Ale. 

"Stew is on the fire and you know where the bowls are, get her some real food, will you? The poor thing looks pale as a ghost." Helga said as she readied herself to get back to her work.

Vulmon stood but beckoned Helga's attention again with a little wave of his hand to bring her closer.

"I'm going to get her fed and then take her up to the rooms Pa was renting for us. I want to let her rest and go meet with Korg in the meantime. If anyone comes asking questions, then you've never heard of her and you never saw her, alright?"

"Vulmon, are you in some kind of trouble?"

"Probably,"

"You're going to tell me everything when you get back if I have to wring it out of you like a dishrag,"

"Sure, sure,"

"Don't 'sure, sure' me, youngin... Get to it, then. We'll talk tonight."

"Fine."

  
  


**-Sanene-**

  
  


The house was strange. The air of the space was thick with the smell of ale and pipe smoke. There were many people inside, but they didn't look like they were related to one another, which was also strange for people who seemed to all be living together. Some were sea-folk with gills and glistening skin while others had pointed ears and little velvety nubs sprouting from their heads. The first floor was built around an enormous hearth fire to keep the whole of the house warm while wooden hatches in the tiled roof were left open to vent off excess smoke. 

Everywhere Dew-On-Heels looked, she found something she'd never seen before. Sconces made of goat horns with lit candles sticking in them. Against the far wall were preserved fish mounted on plaques. One of the fish had a long pointed nose and a tall fin running down its back. The other looked like a bass but bigger to a near frightening degree. Under the mounted fish and behind a counter, there was a woman with ears that resembled a deer’s and a grey nose fused into her upper lip to match them. Dew had seen flashes of this woman within Vulmon on the way here. She was wiping out a few cups and bowls. Behind her were huge storage barrels so big Dew was certain you could fit six men inside each.

When the woman with cervine features looked up and saw them standing by the threshold, there came a flurry of excitement from her as she rushed to meet Vulmon. It would appear to Dew-On-Heels that he and this woman knew each other well, as the latter touched the first’s face and gripped his wrist to lift his arm and examine the bandaging around it.

They did their mouth speaker jabber, and soon Dew-On-Heels found herself being instructed to seat herself in front of the counter where she was offered bread and cheese. This was greatly welcomed and her stomach howled to life the moment the bread passed between her lips and to her eager tongue.

She watched the other two as they spoke, and awkwardly stared at her at various times, but she didn't spend much energy trying to decipher what sorts of discussions were being had between her companion in the strange woman. Dew-On-Heels felt confident that she was safe, given that Vulmon's posture and expression were that of a man who was comfortable. She began to realize the magnitude of the tension this man had been carrying in his face and shoulders throughout their journey. The chatter between her companion and the woman ended abruptly and Vulmon took the plate of bread and cheese with him as he stood.

Dew-On-Heels grunted in a vocalization of protest and followed the plate in his hand to keep picking at it as he moved toward the hearth fire. There he set aside the plate on a convenient chair and left her there momentarily only to return with two bowls and spoons. He grabbed a rag slung over the backrest of the chair to lift the lid from a pot bubbling over the fire and begin filling the bowls with a soupy mixture of cut carrots and chunks of crumbly meat that fell apart at the barest touch with a spoon. Vulmon put both of her hands to work setting a hot bowl in her right and the plate of bread crusts and cheese in her left. Now with what she assumed was his own bowl in hand, he motioned with his spoon to follow him toward a set of steps made from split logs.

Up they went into a lofty second floor with several small rooms, only two of which had doors. It was to the furthest room with a door that Vulmon brought her. Inside were two hay stuffed beds, one cupboard by the doorway, one nightstand between the beds, and a braided circular rug on the floor which was marred by several stains.

Vulmon placed his bowl on top of the cupboard and opened the cabinet underneath. From the cubby inside, he produced a rushlight to place in the fixture on the nightstand. Once it was lit, she could see spaces on the floor which were free of dust and tracked-in debris. This room had been recently cleared of someone's belongings.

Vulmon, though, he looked about the room forlornly and heaved a sigh so heavy that he seemed to feel the need to sit on the end of one of the beds.

The bottom of the wooden bowl was beginning to feel like it was scalding the palm of Dew’s hand, so she set both the bowl and the plate of bread on the nightstand. When she turned to look upon Vulmon again, she saw that he'd pulled a pillow from under the headboard onto his lap. He lifted it and buried his face in it with a deep inhale.

She found this action peculiar and studied him closely before sidling up to seat herself next to him. He looked upset. When he removed the item from his face, she saw that his eye whites were red and the hollows of his sockets damp from tears. Foregoing asking for permission she placed a hand over the back of his. Grief. Loneliness. He missed someone, and she could find that person's face scattered through every tangled string of thoughts in his head. Vulmon resembled this person closely, but they had been older, thicker in the middle, and there was what felt like a loss of security with that man’s absence. Dew knew what this was, she'd felt precisely the same feeling herself. Vulmon was mourning the death of a parent.

Vulmon lifted his hand as his thoughts turned toward the food left to cool on the cabinet and nightstand. His thoughts gave a feeling of urging encouragement. She needed to eat and so did he, and he was choosing to concern himself with that rather than letting his grief overcome him here and now.

Dew-On-Heels sensibly agreed but before turning away to reach for her bowl, she touched his cheek to let it be known that she could see and feel that he was upset and that he had her condolences. She didn't know how to comfort him but over the last few days, she'd learned that acknowledgment of one's upset could be comforting in a way.

Vulmon stood with another great sigh and ate from his bowl while standing by the door left ajar and peering down at the room below. Dew-On-Heels got the distinct feeling this was something like keeping watch. He was nervous, ever alert for threats, as always. The more time she spent with him the more she thought that either he was paranoid, or they were in greater danger than she could ever imagine.

Deer Lady appeared at the door. There was a bit of talk between them and when she left and Vulmon turned back, he had two tankards gripped in one hand by their handles. He awkwardly set them both on the cupboard as well, motioning for her to take her own. The taste of ale was a familiar comfort. It reminded her of the festivities surrounding any celebration held in her village. 

Vulmon finished his meal first and set aside his bowl on the cupboard again, then he continued his watch but he would occasionally glance Dew's way to observe her progress on her own bowl. He was halfway across the room before she could lift the last bite to her lips.

Vulmon took her bowl and stacked it atop his own, grabbed a bread crust from the plate on the night stand to stuff between his jaws, then offered her a hand. The exchange was simple, similar to the time when he left her in the woods so that he could steal the clothes she was now wearing. 

_I'll be back, stay here._

His instructions had an added layer, he didn't seem to want her to leave this room and he pictured her barring the door behind him as he left. This worried her somewhat, but what choice did she have but to trust him? To soothe herself, she reminded herself that, so far, he had not given her any reason to doubt his reliability. If he said he’d be back, then that was how it would be unless something deadlier and angrier than he managed to stop him.

Vulmon smiled just a little. This was the first time Dew-On-Heels had ever seen his lips curl upward at the corners. The way the expression had to contort around the girth of his tusks was charming, at least compared to his usual scowl.

Their hands parted, and Dew-On-Heels heard a deep chuckle as Vulmon's palm dropped gently over the crown of her head. She couldn't sense his thoughts, what with the barrier of her coif, but she could detect a bemused tone as he left her with only the sound of his rumbling voice echoing in her head. 

He left swiftly and quietly, closing the door on his way out. Dew-On-Heels went to the window just in case it would allow her to see him as he left, but he must not have gone in a direction passing the window.

A sense of nakedness crept in. She didn't like to be alone anymore, she realized. She'd hated it when he left her in the woods by herself to go burglaring. It was because she felt vulnerable, unprotected, and everything became much too quiet without the sound of someone else breathing nearby.

After a minute or two staring out the window she went back to the bed, then curled herself on her side hoping for his speedy return.

  
  


**-Galdrinas City: Huyric-**

  
  


Huyric was never happy with the invitation Emperor Talimus had offered the Stryag to live on the palace grounds. It was glaringly obvious that the creature had a detrimental effect on everything around it. The once lush and beloved gardens surrounding the guest villa had become a blighted wasteland. Exotic azalea bushes, some of which three or four hundred years old, were rotting and falling apart in a circular radius surrounding the den of turpitude that had been established when this unholy relic was warmly welcomed into their midst.

The manicured turf which should have been soft and pliant crunched dead beneath the boots of the palace guards trailing Huyric as they neared the villa. The _smell_ , it grew in potency with every step until the Chamberlain had no choice but to press a perfumed handkerchief under his nose or else eject his breakfast. 

It was the animals, the life that had once flourished in every tiny burrow beneath the shrubs or crept through the grounds in the night, poisoned to death by the presence of evil. As the Chamberlain and the entourage of guards took the path between the hedges leading to the front door of the villa, the untouched remains of songbirds, mice, and wild rabbits could be found rotting where they’d dropped from the sky or hauled their macilent bodies from their dens to die in futile attempts to escape the deathly aura of the Emperor’s honored guest. Cats had vacated the palace grounds, knowing better than to feast upon tainted meat.

At the front stoop where the group paused, one of the young men at Huyric’s back could no longer tolerate the rank and began to retch. The sight of swarming maggots squirming under the front door couldn’t have helped the poor men hold the contents of their stomachs, either.

Huyric dug about in his robes for that perfume bottle to douse the area before grasping the knocker. Even the paint on the door was degrading due to the Stryag’s presence. Splinters and paint chips fell in cascades on the first rap, then the entire knocker fell off and clattered to the stone steps on the second tap. Huyric yelped and had jerked backward to avoid having his toes crushed by the heavy object. A moment later he was shuddering and wiping his hands with his handkerchief as it was revealed that a creeping black mold had chewed the wood clean through under the knocker. He resorted to announcing himself verbally.

“Honored Guest, Mage Thulgethra! His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Talimus of Torkel and adjoining realms, respectfully requests an audience with you in the war room!” 

Huyric then opened his arms and signaled to the men with him to stand back as he stepped down the stoop himself to wait at a distance which felt safer. The floorboards within creaked, then the door jerked open as the rot encrusted around the frame released it. A shriveled hand of six fingers wrapped itself around the jamb as the Stryag loomed by the threshold, peering out with one inky eye set deep in a dry, lidless socket.


	10. Korg and Faldren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, for reliable updates and additional content (such as art) please head on over to the blog I set up specifically for this story! http://the-six-realms.tumblr.com
> 
> Also heads up, I'll post chapter 11 which is complete but needs more editing on the 9th. Explanation for that should appear on the blog soon.

-Vulmon-

Merfolk live in homes afloat at an inner harbor on the other side of the city. It's a long walk which was in large part why Vulmon left Sanene with Helga. The place he was headed was encircled in crumbling ten foot thick stone walls, a holdover from an eon ago when the first cities sprung up on these lands. 

When he was a boy, these walls used to make Vulmon feel as though Coreltia were an impenetrable fortress. He now wondered if it was defended and represented politically well enough to keep the Dominion at bay. He considered that, had he not set a barge on fire and abducted Sanene, the elves might have been headed to Coreltia to unleash their wrath upon a city that refused to bend to their will.

This place, sheltered from both merciless sea storms and worse combatants, held dozens of homes that hovered placidly over the calm waters. Each home was built on floats with a primary upper deck and a room built either atop that or partially submerged to facilitate an amphibious lifestyle. The roofs were mostly of a steep pitch and the drip edges hung just a few inches over either side of the decks. Some of the homes had two floors or an alternative construction style but those aberrations of the norm were few and far between. Vulmon was looking for the house with a blue roof to radiate away heat and about six too many damn wind chimes hanging all over the deck railings. He could always hear Korg’s house long before he came within sight of it.

Vulmon was on edge as he navigated the maze of gangways. He hadn't seen Korg in just under a month, and they had argued the last time they spoke. Korg hadn't wanted him to go, citing a grim feeling that he just couldn't shake. He was right, because of _course_ he was. Ever since they were young it always seemed as if Korg were so attuned to the rhythms of the sky and seas that he could divinate whims of fate merely by watching the way waves crashed on the shore. Maybe Vulmon was too superstitious, but no one could deny that Korg's gut was rarely wrong. Faldren had been pissed that Vulmon didn't listen, too, because any time something happened to Vulmon it always hurt Korg as well.

The warrior tried to quiet his miserably guilty thoughts. The blue roof of the house had caught his eye. 

He didn't see anyone on the deck, nor did he see smoke from the roof hatch. He began to worry that they were at sea with the trade fleet. If that were the case then he would have just missed them, for Helga said that Korg was at the inn the night before. Vulmon hopped on deck and checked the door to find it unlocked. He pushed it open to lean inside and call a greeting down the short staircase.

"Korg? Faldren?! Anyone home?"

No answer. Vulmon looked around on the deck to see if there was anything he could use to get their attention. Faldren was a Merm and Korg was a Morc, half Merm and half Orc. There was a good possibility that they were beneath the boat or spending their time elsewhere in the city. 

Korg kept a tidy home, so Vulmon didn't find a paddle or buoy hook lying around to slap at the water with. He resorted to taking his tankard off his belt and simply chucking it over the railing. It produced a small splash and turned over in the water as it filled up, then sank. Vulmon's hopes began to plummet as he waited. Seconds felt like minutes. Ah, he spotted movement, bright whites and yellows shimmering just beneath the glassy surface. Faldren!

Vulmon's heart soared more than he expected at seeing a familiar face as Faldren briefly surfaced. The merman’s head fins stretched with alarm as he peered up at the man standing on his deck. His goldenrod eyes widened and his cerulean face brightened just for a moment before he vanished once more beneath the rippling surface.

Next came another wait which felt longer than it truly was. Where was Korg? Why didn't Faldren have anything to say? Vulmon decided to head toward the door into the cabin.

It was just as he touched the handle that he could hear the rapid stamping of feet coming up the stairs and splashes as sheets of water fell from a very wet body. Vulmon didn't have time to brace himself, he had only the time to stumble back a step before Korg dove over the threshold onto him. Vulmon felt the wind leave him as his back slammed the planks.

"BASTARD! YOU ROTTEN BASTARD!" 

Korg roared insults with his hands curled tightly around the leather straps securing Vulmon's cuirass in place. Vulmon swiped at his eyes to clear them of the salty water falling onto his face as Korg hovered over him. He watched the gills at either side of his friend's neck flair open to expel steamed breath as he huffed and panted furiously. Vulmon wondered if Korg was about to initiate a fight. Could he be that angry?

Vulmon was tugged up into a sitting position. He readied himself to defend against pounding fists, but none came. Salt water saturated through his layers as Korg embraced him tightly around the shoulders in both arms. 

"Don't you ever die on me again, you shit."

Relief swept over the warrior. Of _course_ his old friend wouldn't truly be cross. He settled into the fierce hold, leaning into Korg who practically straddled his lap. It was the first time in weeks that he didn’t feel as though he should be prepared for pain or violence.

Over Korg's shoulder, Vulmon observed Faldren emerge onto the deck and holding the tankard that had been dropped overboard on a finger.

Korg choked on his breath. The morc was rocking slowly against Vulmon the way children do to self soothe. Vulmon knew all too well what his friend had been through over the past week.

"Your father?" Korg asked, breath shaking.

Vulmon shook his head against Korg's shoulder. He didn't want to say it. _Vulkrid,_ let this be the last time he had to tell someone he was a grown orphan. The words simply wouldn't come forth the way he meant them to.

"I can't, please, I can't say it again today,"

Vulmon was crushed tighter in Korg's grip. He moved to free his arm so that he could grip his friend's slick shoulder in return.

A damp hand landed softly on the crown of either man’s head. Faldren began to usher the two inside and away from the prying eyes of the curious neighbors. Vulmon caught the merm shooting an evil glance next door at Gleeda as she hauled herself onto her own front deck. She always came to the surface to ogle at the sound of hostility or upset. 

The interior of their home was modest. Around the men as they withdrew indoors were a few chairs, storage crates, a cot, a small table, and a copper basin full of ashes held up off the floor on wrought iron legs. The houses of merfolk are more for storage and entertaining terrestrial guests than anything else. The merms usually slept in weighed woven baskets hanging below the keel or pontoons of the vessel they called home.

Once indoors, Faldren pulled a dust cloth off one of the wooden chairs in the corner to offer Vulmon somewhere to sit.

"Are you thirsty? Did you walk all the way here from Kathleborg?" Faldren asked.

"Water please, and no, it's a long story, but that part will have to wait. I need to tell the whole thing in order. So it makes sense, yeah?"

Korg and Faldren shared an anxious glance between themselves as Korg began to dry himself off on a sheet of scrapped sailcloth.

"Well, before that," Korg interrupted, "are you hungry? I can start the fire and put something on."

Vulmon thought he must have looked like dog shit if the pair kept trying to feed and water him.

"No, I already ate at Helga's. Korg, I need to talk to you, I need you to believe every word I say, and I _need_ you and Faldren to never tell another soul."

There was another lingering instance of eye contact between the two merm, suspicious this time, then they looked back to the exhausted eyes of their friend back from the dead. They sank solemnly to seat themselves on one of the covered storage crates.

Vulmon closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. He went back to the night when all of this began. The image of the hulking siege tower inching down the hillside would forever be branded into the flesh of his memory. 

"There wasn't a battle, only a slaughter." Vulmon began.

"We were told there were no bodies, only-"

"Bones, ash and-" 

Vulmon's eyes fell shut again and he bared his teeth in a snarl. He was exhausted by re-envisioning the aftermath again and again. It was better for everyone just to get to the point. 

"They built a weapon. It fired some sort of energy, uhm... A white light. Burns up everything it touches." Vulmon stated coldly.

He was trying to keep his words objective as not to nauseate himself. He didn't bother trying to tell the story of the days he couldn't account for. He might as well have dreamed waking on the battlefield with a headache and a father to put to rest. The results of the second demonstration of the Dominion's cruelty was next.

"I followed their trail to Kathleborg. Utter ruins. I met human elders there, too frail to uproot and leave. They told me that there'd been a light. Night was made day, then the walls blew open... 

"Those Dominion Bastards poured in like wolves harrying penned sheep. They took any humans they found to Morvan. The orcs... they left them piled in the town square for a fly feast."

Faldren leaned into his husband with his arms looped about his waist. Korg pulled his other half even closer with an arm around his shoulder.

"Did they send a detachment back to Morvan with the humans? Are the rest still on the move, you think?" Korg asked.

Vulmon could see the worry hardening his friend's face. The morc pulled at the length of sun bleached hair tied at the back of his head the way always did when he was formulating his next move. Vulmon continued on to prevent Korg from deciding to do something drastic, like disbanding his crew and leaving Corletia, for example.

"They all went to Morvan, and they won't be bringing the weapon here."

"But how can you know that?!" Korg snapped.

"I was still behind them when they reconnoitered outside their colony. I- well. I saw them tear down the siege tower and load the weapon onto a barge. One of those big triple decked bastards they float down that ugly canal of theirs. I waited until midday when most of the demons were asleep. Packed myself into this _reeking_ box full of dried black bean things, and then I prayed it was going on the barge too."

Korg and Faldren were both silent but looked at him with a stunned mortification in their eyes. Vulmon's nerves were too frayed not to be put on the defensive.

"I was angry, alone, felt I had nothing left to lose!"

" _We_ had something to lose by you having a _deathwish_ and a hard-on for revenge!"

Korg lurched forward and rewarded Vulmon for his foolhardiness with a swift slap across the side of the head. The orc growled in aggravation, but perhaps he deserved that just a little.

"And what happened? You hacked and slashed until you fell overboard and nearly drowned? I can smell the canal on you!" _Now_ Korg was angry. 

"I wasn't there for some paltry pound of flesh! And I didn't fall overboard!" Vulmon roared back, indignant

Korg threw his hands in the air with a bark of ired laughter.

"Why didn't you just _come home,_ for the glory of Vulkrid?!"

"I did what I did to _destroy_ the weapon, Korg! As any good orc would do if he could!"

"Is that all?" Korg huffed.

Faldren was trying to calm Korg with a palm stroking the shaved areas of his scalp. It didn't appear to help. Korg stood and gesticulated to indicate that he wasn't in the mood to be petted like a cat.

"I'm starting this fire and throwing food on." Kord said with an air of finality. 

The sailor was done with the discussion, but Vulmon was not. He planned to wait until the fire was lit and likely fish sizzling over it before opening his mouth again. Better to let Korg's frustration fizzle out. Alas, Korg had found more to say before Vulmon felt he could say more.

"Did you destroy it?"

Vulmon drew in and blew out another deep breath. An important question, but a complicated one to answer.

"Yes and no. There's a girl here in Corletia with me. I found her inside the thing."

"A girl was in it? What the hell for?" 

"No idea, but elf magic is as twisted as they are. Looked like- like she was what powered it? I can't be sure. I couldn't read the symbols all over it. Or the ones on all the gold shit they put on her wrists and neck."

"That sounds like cuffs to suppress innate magic. A witch? They're rare these days." Faldren postulated.

"I don't think so? Maybe. I've never seen a witch. Never seen anything like Sanene either."

"Oh, she's an orc then? An orc witch is less likely. Only ever heard of the one in-"

"No no," Vulmon had to stop Faldren now before he really got to talking. Faldren had heard the orcish name and jumped to conclusions, "She's not an orc, I gave her that name because I can't actually, uh, say her name without looking like I'm crazy. Her name is… what it feels like to walk on grass that's all dewy in the morning. Like what it feels like. With your feet. On the dewy grass."

Again, both men stared at Vulmon in a stunned silence. He came here knowing this was where the story would veer from epic into the realms outside of sanity. He groaned and shook his head, trying to come up with a way to explain. Might as well keep talking. They'd know he wasn't lying when they met her anyway.

"She looks human, but… doesn't. She has these marks all over her face and body. If you touch her you feel and think everything she does."

Faldren looked pale now. Odd. No one else said a word. Korg looked skeptical.

"...I need help. I need to get her to Ruxheim, home, to the mountain village where she won't be found."

"Why didn't you bring her here straight away?" Faldren asked, voice suspiciously flat.

"She tires fast and your house is across the city from the gates. I was also hoping my shit was still at the inn so I could throw on something that doesn't reek of death and righteous armpit."

Korg ruefully spoke up.

"Sorry, when the news broke we, you know, thought the worst. You're sure that it was just you? No one else made it out?"

"I really don't want to go back there in my head again right now, Korg." Vulmon said through a weary breath.

There was silence then, neither Vulmon or Korg knowing quite how to proceed with this discussion. Faldren provided them with a reminder of the actions which would be pertinent to the matters at hand.

"Your things are all here in the trunks we took from your room. Get changed and go get her."

"Alright, where is- oh but first! She has sores all over her back and around her, um, arse, from being strapped down inside the Damned Thing."

Faldren nodded with a cringe.

"I'm going to go fetch my mother so that we can clean her up, then. I want to see your arms, too, when you get back." Faldren said.

The merman flicked at the floppy ends of the crude bandaging hanging out of Vulmon's sleeve as he got up from his seat. He muttered something in wyrlurian before heading toward the wet exit. 

The wet exit was for folks with gills. A porthole of sorts which, through merm magic, kept water from rushing inside but allowed objects and people to move in and out of the living space easily. It looked like a framed six foot long oval of wine colored glass on the floor. Faldren dove through it with such grace that nary a droplet splashed out. Vulmon had fallen up to his neck in that thing more times than he could count.

Korg also got up from his spot by the fire. He pulled up the cloth covering the pair of trunks that had once been in the room Vulmon had shared with his father at Helga's.

The warrior tried not to look at his father's trunk. Oh, he just wasn't ready to sort through all of those memories. 

His own trunk contained every piece of clothing and object he owned; which wasn't much but a couple hunting bows, some belts, fletching tools, a handful of tunics in brown or muted green, and a few pairs of trousers. 

Vulmon shucked off everything he wore to swap out his armor and his ruined clothes for beige slacks and one of the green tunics. The one he selected was his favorite because it had a woven yellow and brown ribbon stitched about the collar. The ribbon's pattern was simple parallel stripes, but it was still the finest garment he owned. It felt good not to look like shit after days slogging it across Hecstein on foot. Korg went ahead and grabbed the discarded clothing before Vulmon had a chance to put it away. 

"I'm taking the lot of it outside. No offense, but this is going to make a stink of my house."

"You're just jealous of my magnificent musk," Vulmon joked, hoping to lighten the bleak mood.

"Right, just like I'm jealous of that land lover's foot odor, too," Korg chuckled as he headed outside with the armful of armor and soiled clothing.

“Yeah? And you smell like raw salmon!" Vulmon howled after him.

“I smell _lovely_ as a salmon dinner, thank you very much!” Korg called out his rebuttal from just outside.

Vulmon had missed him and the banter, even if they sometimes argued. It pained him that he wouldn't be able to stay longer than a few days. This was not the time to dwell on that kind of disappointment. He needed to go fetch the girl.

A final chore was to check the bandaging on his arms. Vulmon adjusted and tightened them where needed with Korg's help. His left thumb had swollen to look like a plump sausage with a nail growing out of it. It was now hard to discern the creases over his knuckle. It wasn't sure when that happened or if it was truly broken, but it certainly felt hot and pulsed whenever he tried to move it.

Vulmon didn't worry about it much, Faldren would probably be able to figure out what was wrong with it and make it good as new. He was thankful more than ever that Korg married a healer.

Vulmon rested his hand atop his father's trunk of belongings, considering whether he should open it and take one of the war hammers he knew to reside there. He decided against it in part for the same reason he wouldn't look at the trunk while he was dressing himself. The rest of his reasoning was that his hatchet would do just fine with the added benefit of being an easily dismissed tool. No one would ask why he was carrying a hatchet openly in the street. People worry when they see an orc stalking somewhere purposefully with a war hammer. 

Although no Dominion elves would ever be permitted within this city, at least not by legitimate means, it felt better to be armed. That's the thing with Hy-ur elves, you can't trust them to abide by laws written by those that they view as lessers. _Dominion Swine_. 

Vulmon wondered if he'd ever feel secure again as he left his friend’s home headed toward Helga's. The skies had grown dark in the time that he'd spent there. His anxiety spilled acid into his stomach again. Elves get bolder at night. His pace was brisk as he navigated the raised paths toward the inn and he only found relief once he reached the door to push it open. That relief was quickly squashed, for what he saw inside sent ice through his blood. 

There was Helga at her counter and arguing with a patron but the look of that patron triggered alarm within Vulmon. The voice this customer spoke with was that of a woman but the pitch was high and profoundly orotund. The flesh of the hand resting on the counter was gray and dull as onyx. They were tall for a woman, cloaked in black, but the sleeve draped about her wrist was a shimmering gold which could only be produced from the finest spider silk of Torkel.

_Elf. Drow. Black Order, maybe._

He watched the argument, dazed for a few precious seconds as he wondered how in the hell this elf had gotten through the gate into the city. He remembered what Yadris had mentioned off-hand earlier, something about a loud drow woman making a scene out there. This must be her. What did she want?! Surely this had to do with himself and the woman being there. 

Helga’s eyes flickered toward the door and settled on him as the drow began to huff and rifle through the bag on her hip. She very pointedly glanced up toward the room where the girl rested with only her eyes while the elf was distracted. _Sanene_ . He had to go to her and get the both of them out of here, _quickly_.

“Much gold, I’ll pay for your time, please! You _must_ help.” The elf’s common was a little spotty and the accent almost too thick to understand. She was trying to grease Helga with gold.

Vulmon moved, finally, feeling as though his head was spinning drunkenly for how quickly his blood was pumping. He excused himself through the gathering circle of people watching Helga try to tell off the elf and stalked for the stairs as discreetly he had the power to.


End file.
